


and they were roommates

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Content warnings:, M/M, Multi, Near Future, PTSD, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, Suicidal Ideation, characters growing up, friends to lovers to exes to roommates to lovers, mentions of workplace sexual harassment, non-graphic mentions of sex as a thing that exists, post-college, they are all like 23 years old in this one, this fic goes dark in places but it has a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-01 12:01:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 70,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17866874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: (oh my god they were roommates)Jeremy dropped out of college halfway through his freshman year.  Four years have passed, and he's ready to restart his life in a rundown little apartment with Christine and Michael.  A story about navigating adulthood, rekindling old romances, battling Squips, hope, pain, and photography.





	1. Chapter 1 - Jeremy

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a little different than anything else I've posted, in that I started it in September, and wrote it from start to finish before posting this first chapter, as part of the Be More Chill Big Bang. Now it's all up, completed, and ready for you to read. Feedback on any chapter or any aspect of the story is very much appreciated!
> 
> Also, please check out this amazing art of the story by tumblr user things2ruin: 
> 
> http://icouldwritebooks.tumblr.com/post/182958463660/fic-title-and-they-were-roommates-written-for

There are two bedrooms and a living room in Christine and Michael’s apartment on Crane Street. The kitchenette doesn't have a stove, just mini toaster oven and a hot plate with melted off buttons, though Michael insists it's useable so long as you have good intuition. Jeremy’s intuition may or may not be terrible. Either way, he struggles to trust it.

The bathroom has ugly green tiles on the wall, and fuzzy carpeting reeking of mildew and bad decisions— the kind probably made during the 1970’s. According to Christine, there’s something special about the carpeting that makes it dry crazy fast, but she still refuses to walk barefoot on it. 

There’s a lot of Christine in the apartment. 

Christine is the only one who appreciates the faded stenciling that covers the walls, clumsily sketched images of leaves and flowers, sweeping up and down in dizzy, drunken diagonals. She's hung half a dozen musical posters around the living room, just as unevenly. Strings of fairy lights frame the windows, and a tacky purple _Diva Resting: Do Not Enter_ sign denotes the door to Christine’s room. There’s a photo of her dads on the rickety kitchen table, and a sticker of a bunny rabbit in period clothing pasted on the fridge. 

Michael is just as much of a driving force. 

Michael’s got an entertainment area set up in the living room, consisting of such treasures as a working Nintendo 64, and an actual VCR, which he coaxed back into functionality with his own hands. The plates and cups are Sonic the Hedgehog themed, because if there’s one thing that Michael digs, it’s ironically buying outdated things with unforgivable levels of cringe factor. That also accounts for the cardboard Xena cutout that stands right in the doorway, clad in taped on sunglasses and a wide-brimmed beach hat. 

The bathroom towels are old ones that Jeremy remembers from Michael’s house, and he's pretty sure that the curtains used to belong to the Canigulas. The Pikachu nightlight in the hall is Michael’s through and through, and the stray shoe by the doorway is totally Christine’s. 

The furniture is shared, and the bookshelf is a mismatched jumble of Christine stuff, Michael stuff, and stuff that could belong to either one of them. They even have a communal toothbrush holder with two little holes and two toothbrushes deposited side by side! 

Jeremy wonders how he’ll make space for himself. He wonders when exactly he stopped being a natural piece of their little dynamic, and what he’ll have to do to prove his worth and be a piece of it again. 

“I want to show you my favorite part of the house,” Christine says, the first time Jeremy visits. Michael is at work, which makes things easier. Christine opens the window and takes Jeremy’s hand, pulling him out with her, to an outdoor area too small to be called a balcony, but not serving any other clear function. The ground is coated in black tarp, and there’s a high brick railing around it, that Jeremy is just tall enough to peer over. If Jeremy leans backwards, his shoulders will touch the outer wall of the house, and if he leans forward, he’ll stumble into the rain gutter. 

“It’s nice,” Jeremy lies. Actually, what it is is cramped.

“It’s quiet,” says Christine. “Nobody else ever comes up here. Also, if I climb up on the railing, I can see the old mill building.” 

“Please never climb up on the railing.” Jeremy bites the inside of his cheek, as his mind supplies him with the cartoonish, but no less horrifying image of Christine tumbling off the rail, and forming a kind of Christine pancake on the ground below. Then again, maybe Jeremy is projecting his own ridiculously bad balance onto her. He falls a lot more than normal people, both literally, and figuratively, but perhaps that can change. Jeremy would like to think that he’s over his old BS by now, seeing as he’s twenty-three and getting ready to embark on the path of legitimate adulthood, only a few years too late. In fact, maybe he should start it by climbing onto that railing, and getting a clear look at the world below. 

“I take it back,” Jeremy blurts out. “You wanna go up? Like now?”

Christine snorts. “That's the last thing I'd trust you to do. I mean that in the most loving way possible, but no.” 

“So only you get to live life on the edge?”

“I was born living on the edge.” 

“Does Michael go up there with you?” 

“Yep!” Christine smiles, like somebody who would never guess why or how much this might bother anyone. “All the time.” 

“Is the old mill building even that great?” 

“Even that great? Jeremy, I love the old mill building and all it stands for with every fraction of my heart and soul.” 

“Well!” Jeremy forces a smile. “Alright then!” 

Christine takes both of Jeremy’s hands, giving them a little shake. She's never once been excited about something without spilling her enthusiasm all over whoever was closest, and the way Christine's emotions work is that she gets incredibly excited all the time about dozens upon dozens of significant and insignificant things, which is great, except when it isn't.

“Mostly I like that it's mine!” Christine continues. “I can look at it or not as I choose. There was a trap door in the ceiling of the theatre back at NYU, and it led to the roof, and we weren't allowed to go up there. We did of course, lots of times, but this is different. Now I'm allowed to do anything! It's kinda killer, like finally being in control. It’s great telling you things like this. It’s like you just _get_ it, you know? You’re one of the best people in the world to talk to, Jeremy.”

Jeremy doesn't have the heart to tell her that he still isn't that good about being in control. He thinks that control is something he's getting better at, but he doesn't say so. Talk about self improvement still means admitting to your own sucky inner core, even if you don't say it out loud. 

“You’re one of the best people in the world to talk to, too,” Jeremy says. He hasn't done a lot of talking yet, but maybe he will another time. 

——————-

A couple of weeks later, Jeremy asks Michael if he can move in. It's a baby step, not like getting a three person toothbrush holder, but it’s a place to start.

They’re talking over Skype, like they used to when Michael was far away at college, only now Michael is a mere two hour train ride away. Jeremy could buy a ticket and be with him in person, if only only Jeremy weren't such a lousy excuse for a human being. 

“It would be like before,” Jeremy tells the image of Michael on his computer screen. 

Michael lets out a less than appreciative sigh. He rubs the back of his neck. Face to face, Jeremy hardly ever noticed how many nervous habits Michael had, but over Skype, it's like having a zoomed in view of every awkward gesture. 

“Look, forget it,” Jeremy says. 

“I'm not saying no.” 

“I can get why you’d want to say no.” 

“That's not what I'm saying, bud.” 

“I'd say no to me, if I were you.” 

“I want to know if you can handle it,” Michael says. 

“What?” 

“If you’re gonna move in for a couple weeks, and then freak and change your mind, then you probably shouldn't,” Michael says. “If you’re gonna stay…” Michael gestures off into the distance, open-palmed, and bemusedly noncommittal. “Christine’s been clear from the start that if she gets a part in any of the tours she's always trying out for, she's gone. I don't exactly dig the idea of working three jobs to pay for rent, if that happens. Catch my drift?”

“Wouldn't your moms help you out?” 

“Dude, they’re already taking care of my health insurance payments. I should probably keep a handle on the whole rent thing, and you could be part of that if you wanted.” 

Jeremy worries his lip, not hard enough to break the skin. He's totally outgrown that. 

“Jer?” 

“I… um. Yeah. It'd be nice to be a part of something.” 

Michael’s face softens, though he still doesn't look exactly happy, or exactly non-conflicted. “Awesome,” he says. “Gnarly. Uh… tubular. We’re cool.” 

“My student loans should cover housing, if I get approved.” 

“You don't have to wait.”

“Thought this was a financial arrangement?” 

Michael grimaces, then looks around, like he's searching for a conveniently placed parent to keep him from doing something stupid. “You know how sometimes you make a decision, and you just have to go for it right away?” 

Jeremy nods. 

“Yeaaah,” Michael says. “Guess you do. No offense. _Super_ no offense. Anyway, that's where I'm at. I have Tuesday off. I could help you move in.” 

“You sure?” Jeremy asks. 

“If you are!”

“I am! I—”

“Cool. See you soon.” 

Jeremy sees the pads of Michael’s fingers, as he reaches for the button to turn Skype off on his tablet. His face flickers out, and Skype asks Jeremy if he'd like to rate the call, as if there aren't still words stuck in his mouth that he didn't get time to transmit. It's a question that has always struck him as weirdly phrased, because the quality of his calls to Michael have never had anything to to do with Skype as a piece of software. Like, the connection speed is fine, Jeremy guesses, but nowhere near enough to keep him and his favorite person in the world connected. 

Jeremy can't believe some of the things he's just said to Michael. _It would be nice to be part of something_. Really? Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. 

But now is not the time to get upset over nothing. Jeremy closes his eyes. “I'm not stupid,” he whispers. Sometimes saying it out loud helps. “I _am_ part of things.” Jeremy strains his ears, waiting for another voice to confirm or refute. When no other voice comes, he straightens his spine, closes up his computer, and goes downstairs to tell his dad the good news. 

—————-

Jeremy doesn't have a lot of stuff to pack, owing to the Squip getting pretty draconian, when it acts up, about what possessions Jeremy can and can't keep. Still, Michael and Christine's apartment is small, and Jeremy hasn't asked about where he's going to keep himself, much less all of his dumb crap. 

“You don't have to get rid of anything you own,” Jeremy’s dad is quick to tell him. “Take what you want, and the rest can stay right where it is. There’ll always be a room for you here, son.” 

Jeremy doesn't say much, but gives his dad a quick hug in thanks. He thinks of Brooke complaining years ago, over group chat, that her jerkass father threw out her bed, and turned her childhood room into an office, a whole week into her first semester at college. She still has a place to sleep on the couch in her mom’s apartment when she visits, or in one of her dad’s three guest bedrooms, but the office is remains a sore point. Then there’s Jenna’s mom, who packed all of Jenna's things up indiscriminately when their house got repainted, and never bothered to seal the boxes well enough to withstand the moisture in their home’s leaky basement. Even Christine’s dads, who are some of the most doting parents Jeremy has ever known (next to Michael’s moms), have taken to dumping their big plastic Christmas tree in Christine's room during the off season, rather than dragging it up the ladder to the attic. 

For Christine, Brooke, and Jenna, being able to hold on to their belongings and the sanctity of their personal space has never had the same psychological significance that it has for Jeremy. Catching Jeremy throwing out even things that are obviously worn out is enough to make his dad nervous, since it usually foretells a much higher level breakdown. Nobody wants that.

Into moving boxes go the fancy hardcover Lord of the Rings books that Jeremy’s dad got him last Hanukkah, an assortment of worn T-shirts, jeans, and socks, and Jeremy’s computer. Jeremy leaves behind a pair of converse with the soles worn out, and the unused iTunes gift card that his mom sent him a few months ago, after years of radio silence. He leaves the childhood stuffed animals that he keeps tucked in his desk drawer, but brings Cards Against Humanity, ‘cause that shit’s funny. He packs the tank left over from his ill-fated adventures in fish keeping. Maybe he, Michael, and Christine can get a fish! He packs the moleskine notebook that he likes the idea of writing in, but never opens. There are lots of things that he could chronicle in that notebook, like kosher recipes, homework assignments, or daily lists of everything that he says and does wrong. 

Tuesday comes and goes, but Jeremy still isn't finished packing, because he is an idiot. That's the first thing he puts in the notebook. 

The second thing he puts in the notebook is what an inefficient snowflake he is, ‘cause Michael fakes sick from work so he can be there to help him move in on Wednesday instead, and Christine switches a morning appointment to the afternoon, only Jeremy misses her, because he needs to unpack his shirts, replace two of them with different shirts, repack them again, then change his mind, unpack some more, and finally go back to the original arrangement. Even Jeremy’s dad changes around his entire day to drive Jeremy and his boxes to the new place. 

“You ready to head off, private?” Jeremy’s dad asks, when the last of his things are loaded into the car. 

“One second.” Jeremy dashes back up the stairs to his room, for one last look. He slips out his phone, taking pictures of his bed and every corner, twice for each section, once with flash and once without. He scrolls through them on the way back down.

“Artsy!” His dad exclaims, looking at the pictures over Jeremy’s shoulder as he makes his way out.

“They aren't really.”

“Sure they are.” 

“Okay.” 

“Don't ‘okay’ me! I admire your… attention to detail. You really know how to capture the moment.” 

“I think I'm ready to go.”

Jeremy’s dad claps his hand down on Jeremy’s shoulder. He’s oddly silent for several minutes, then spends the rest of the car ride giving Jeremy awkward speeches about how he’s going to ace all his online classes, and how he could have never imagined being able to get an entire degree just by staring at a screen back when he was a boy. 

“It’ll be another chance for you and Michael to go to school together, like you both wanted,” Jeremy’s dad says. 

“Michael’s done with school.” 

“And you will be too!” Jeremy’s dad ruffles his hair. “Sooner than you know it. I'm a little jealous, actually. College is the best time of your life.” 

“That's what you said last time I went.” Jeremy smiles, to show he's not arguing, just speaking god’s honest truth. 

“Well, this time will be different, if you let it.” 

“If I try hard enough.” 

“That's the spirit!” 

Jeremy leans against the passenger side door, watching the world and the town he grew up in fly past, and contemplating how most grown-ups wouldn't need their dad to drive them to their first adult apartment. At least not being able to drive is a dyspraxia issue rather than a Squip issue, but it's still lame. 

“I checked out your new neighborhood on google maps,” Jeremy’s dad says, as if he's been reading Jeremy’s mind. “Looks like there’s a supermarket within walking distance, and a hardware store. Try to eat healthy. Nothing like a carrot to help you fight your battles. They help you see in the dark, ten-hut!”

“Uh. The hardware store will come in handy if I ever need to buy a hammer and…hammer… something.” 

“Hammers!” says Jeremy’s dad. 

“Hammers!” Jeremy echoes. It just goes to show which of his parents he inherited his stellar conversational skills from. 

About an hour and a half later, Jeremy texts Michael to let him know that he's almost there. Michael is waiting outside when the car pulls up. He high fives Jeremy and his dad in turn. 

“Yo, give me some boxes,” he says, and that's how they start the move in process, making just three trips to get Jeremy’s stuff up the stairs. 

Before making his final trip up, Jeremy stops outside to survey the neighborhood. There's an antique shop, a florist, and a cigar shop on his side of the intersection. Right under his shiny new house is a restaurant called Thai Me, which his shiny new landlords own and work at. The other side of the street boasts a liquor store, a gas station, and a building with boarded up windows. So this is where Jeremy is going to live! He says goodbye to his father, and gets to it. 

————

Unpacking happens. First, Michael makes them a plate of nachos, consisting of corn chips microwaved with mini packets of string cheese. He sets them down on the kitchen table, still hot and bubbling. 

“This is cool,” Jeremy says.

“Five star dining,” Michael agrees. He hunches over the table, quietly shoving chips onto his mouth, with great concentration, as though this is his only goal in life. “Take a couple, why don't you?” he reminds Jeremy, who gets up to wash his hands, and then does, cognizant of the fact that Michael is feeding him. They've only lived together for like ten minutes, and already Michael is doing something nice. Jeremy is going to have to be the best housemate ever. If he can be the best housemate ever, especially to Michael, then everything will be okay. 

“I'll wash the dishes!” Jeremy offers. “I mean the… dish. I'm gonna wash the hell out of this dish.” 

“Right! That's not something I would ever stop you from doing. You gotta do what it takes to make yourself comfortable. Let’s just finish eating first, okay?” 

Jeremy grabs chip, and then another. After they finish, Michael shows Jeremy where the dish soap is, and Jeremy washes the plate. There are a couple of unwashed plates and cups in the sink, so he washes those too. From there, it's down to business. 

“So, Christine and I figured out a system,” Michael says. “I mean, mostly I figured it out while she dragged me for making things ‘unnecessarily complicated’, but you know how there are only two bedrooms?” 

Jeremy nods. 

“It wouldn't be fair for Christine and I to both get a space to ourselves, and for you not to, so you and I are going to alternate who gets the bedroom and who sleeps on the couch. We’ll switch off every other night, so you should keep half your clothes in the bedroom and half of them in a bin under the couch, which, by the way—” Michael crouches down on the floor in front of the couch, pulling a thin plastic storage bin from the gap underneath “—check out how I got you a housewarming present and everything.” 

“Cool!” 

“Mega cool. I even got you the one with the blue lid. So, let's get down to deciding which of your clothes go where, and then if you have anything cool, we can put it on the bookshelf for people to admire at all those awkward house parties we’re not throwing.” 

“People might visit.” 

“Jenna’s gonna next week, so yeah. Hopefully you brought some good stuff, so we can overwhelm her with nerd artifacts.” 

Mostly, Jeremy is happy that Michael’s being talkative. Together, they tackle his clothing, making sure to get a more or less equal amount into both the drawers in the bedroom, and the bin under the couch. Then, they take out some of Michael’s clothes and put them in the bin too, so he'll have some for the nights when he's sleeping in the living room. Sharing the bin is good. It's  
almost as good as sharing a toothbrush holder. 

They get Jeremy’s books on the bookshelf, and Michael gushes about the tank, suggesting they fill it up with those little white underwater frogs, or maybe a really big centipede. 

“This reminds me of moving into our old dorm,” Jeremy says, and Michael’s smile falters. 

“Don't remind me.” 

“But… but, okay… so, does it count as reminding you to say I'm—I’m gonna— I'm gonna to do it right this time? Because I am. Going to do this right.” 

Michael nods tightly. He's still clutching the tank. “… Did you know it's physically impossible for centipedes to have exactly one hundred legs, because they always have an odd number of leg pairs, and fifty is an even number?” 

Jeremy shakes his head. What Michael is really saying is that he doesn't want to talk about the first time they tried to move in together, and if he doesn't want to talk about it, then Jeremy shouldn't either. 

Jeremy takes a deep breath. “I'm not sure you’re selling me on the whole pet centipede thing.” 

“Their first set of legs are venomous fangs, dude.” 

“So, I heard this one really fun science fact about how fish don't have fangs, or creepy legs, and they also love living in tanks. Or we can go with the frog idea! Frogs are awesome.” 

“We’ll see what Christine thinks. For now—” Michael clears out a space on the bookshelf for the tank, puts it down, then bolts off to get the Pikachu nightlight, which he puts inside. “‘Cause somebody has to live in here,” he explains. “An empty tank would look too weird.” 

“He looks safe,” Jeremy agrees. 

“Contained.” 

“Right.” 

From there on out, Jeremy and Michael finish the task of unpacking in record time, especially considering what an ordeal packing was. 

Christine comes bursting in the door at around seven o’clock, with bag of what looks to be props slung over her shoulder. 

“Jeremy!” She comes over to hug him, all bright smiles. “Guess who wasn't what they _weren't_ looking for at auditions today?” 

“Somebody who wasn't you?” 

“Ugh, I wish!” She adopts a sour expression, deepening her voice, “ _No, not this one. She has thick ankles._. Thick ankles! I tripped twice the last time I wore heels, and I swear it's owing to my thick ankles that I’m still among the living. It's maddening. I don't care who likes me and who doesn't, but it _would_ be nice to get a gig. But never mind. The kids at Spirit Zone were good. Really good.” 

Spirit Zone is an after school activity center for underprivileged kids, where Christine directs plays and runs drama workshops for children, ranging from kindergarten to high school age, depending on the day. By all reports, most of which are glowing and come from Michael, Christine is indispensable. 

“What were you working on?” Jeremy asks, taking her bag to hang it up. There's an ease between him and Christine that there isn't between him and Michael, and that ease is manifesting itself in a natural inclination to help her lug around her stuff. 

“Improv! We were playing duck, duck, goose, except we replaced geese with other animals, and then the kids had act out being those animals while they chased the other kids around. One of them decided to go ‘duck, duck, duck, duck, Ms. Canigula’ and then the kid he chose had to act like me.” 

“How’d he act like you?” 

Christine crouches down, making herself even more diminutive than her usual five foot one, adopts a ridiculously large grin, and lunges at Jeremy, who stumbles backwards into the wall with a grunt. 

“Caught you!”

“She did,” Michael agrees. 

“Congratulations?” 

“Guess that means I'm stuck with you now.” 

“Right, so—” Michael gestures to the couch. Christine sits down, and Jeremy does too, not missing the look that Michael and Christine exchange, but also not knowing what it means. It makes his skin prickle, and he straightens his spine, resting his hands on his knees, and biting his lip to try to hold back from saying anything stupid. 

It doesn't work. 

“You know, I would've never expected my two best friends to move in together without me,” Jeremy says. He doesn't bring up the added weirdness that they are also the only two people he's ever dated, sometimes separately, and for a few very memorable months towards the end of junior year, simultaneously, in a Consensual Polyamory for Beginners type of way. Christine and Michael aren't dating now, but they've still got this couple vibe going on, in the place where they and Jeremy used to have a trio vibe. 

“Yeah,” says Michael. “I wonder how that could’ve happened.” 

“I-” Jeremy swallows against the sensation that the wind has been knocked out of him. 

“I'm just saying, you’re the one who took yourself out of the equation. And that's okay! It's fine. You’re here now.” 

“And we’re really happy about that,” Christine adds, giving Jeremy’s arm a squeeze. 

Jeremy nods. 

“Also,” Christine continues, “house rules are really simple. Nobody enters my room, ever, or they die. If something looks gross, clean it. We had a chore list, but it sowed discord, so no more chore list.” 

“I'm stunned that this place is as clean as it is,” says Jeremy. Back in high school, he did get invited into Christine's room a handful of times, and he practically grew up at Michael’s house. Jeremy wouldn't call either of them a housecleaning disaster, but his Squip would. 

“We cleaned a ton for you,” Michael admits. 

Again, that airless feeling, like somebody punched Jeremy directly in the lungs. He rubs his hand through his hair, willing his shoulders to relax. “I think we’re beyond cleaning for each other.” 

“You’ll be singing a different tune when we fall back into our usual habits, and the dust bunnies under the couch gain sentience.” 

A forced laugh. “Dust bunnies,” Jeremy repeats. 

“Massive, vengeful dust bunnies, that creep around trying to kill us in our sleep. It's really something, my dude.”

“We should watch a movie,” says Christine, apparently bored of discussing rules.

“Yeah, okay,” says Michael. “Pick one out. I need ten minutes to check the network, and then I'll be back.” 

Christine does not react to the mention of the ‘network’ and all that it entails, and Jeremy endeavors not to either, leaning instead into Christine, as she selects a movie for the night. 

“Even if I did get cast for something big,” Christine says, as she scrolls, “it would change my life a ton, you know? I'm up for change, but the kids at the Zone need me. God, do you think Mr. Reyes ever said something like that? He once told my dads at a parent teacher conference that he thought I was a young Sam Reyes.” 

Jeremy makes a face. “I think he just meant that you were his best student, but I'll warn you if I ever catch you becoming creepily obsessed with hot pockets,” he promises. 

Michael gets back in time to watch the opening credits to Grease, which judging from the resigned look on his face, he's seen a lot of times already. 

“Anything on the network?” Christine asks. 

“Nada. I wonder if Sandy and Danny will get together this time.” 

“Only one way to find out.”

——————

Michael offers Jeremy the bedroom for the first night, but Jeremy turns it down, and Michael doesn't argue. Nonetheless, he follows Michael to the door when it's time to turn in for the evening. 

“If it's too heavy for after midnight, let's not talk about it,” Michael suggests, standing in the doorway, and leaning against the frame. 

“I just want to know if you actually want me here, or if you're just putting up with me.” 

Michael rubs his forehead, like his head hurts, then pushes his hand back through his hair, making it stand on end. Patented stressed and tired Michael behavior. 

“College is—” Michael breaks off, making a sort of waving gesture with his hand, like a snake, or a running river. 

“Uh…”

“Water," Michael finishes, words catching up with his thoughts. “It's water under the bridge, okay?” 

“But if it isn't—”

Michael grabs on to Jeremy, holding him firmly by both shoulders, and looking him in the face. “You’re my best friend, no matter what happened, or what happens from here on out,” he says, and this time it sounds genuine. “Get some sleep,” Michael finishes. “You got classes tomorrow, yeah?” 

Back in the living room, Jeremy strips down to his boxers. He gets his pillow and blankets out from under the couch, and spreads out, trying to get comfortable. It's too short for him lying down, but he's sure he’ll get used to it. 

As Jeremy drifts off to sleep, he tries not to think of all the ease and familiarity he's left behind. Best to believe that uprooting his entire life for arbitrary and badly thought out reasons will be the thing to lead him down the path of personal growth.


	2. Chapter 2 - Jeremy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for a graphically described past mental and emotional breakdown.

Jeremy wakes shivering, maybe from the cool air hitting his bare feet, but maybe from something else. He strains his ears, searching for a fizz of static, or a smooth voice, but all he hears is music blasting from Christine’s room. It's shut off before he can catch enough to discern what song it is. Probably her alarm. 

Jeremy sits up and rubs the sleep out of his eyes. He casts around the side table, knocking over his inhaler as he fumbles for his phone. He stands up, and whirls around to take a photo of the couch where he spent the night. From there, he begins his slow walk around the perimeter of the room. Ignoring the blur of white at the peripheral of his vision, he snaps pictures of Xena, the bookshelf, the door to Christine's room, and the stenciling on the walls. He takes a photo of the window, before crawling through it to the tiny outdoor area, with the railing Christine thinks he shouldn't climb on. The Squip is sitting up there, white cape glittering in the morning sun. Jeremy points his phone camera at him, and the Squip poses, with a shit-eating grin and his middle finger pointing towards the sky. Jeremy snaps the picture, then turns to snap a picture in the other direction. He takes four more pictures before he’s done.

When Jeremy climbs back inside, Michael is leaning out the front door, looking around. Judging by his sweatpants, mussed hair, and lack of shirt, he's not going anywhere this early in the morning, but he's got the door open nonetheless. Jeremy gets a picture of him just as he's turning around. 

“Dude, what's up?” Michael asks, watching Jeremy slowly lower his phone. 

Jeremy points to the window. That doesn't explain anything, but his mouth often takes a while to sync with his mind. 

“Hanging out on the crappy balcony?” Michael asks. “That's cool. I'll remember that next time you seem to disappear.” 

“I was… uh… playing Pokémon Go.”

“Catch any?” 

“I hope not.” 

Michael raises his eyebrows at Jeremy, who looks away, passing his phone back and forth between his hands. It’s only when Michael turns his back on him to rummage through the cupboard, that Jeremy approaches the kitchen table. 

“Want me to make eggs?” Jeremy offers. “Like omelette eggs? With stuff in them?” Cooking is one of the things that he taught himself, while he wasn't going to school. Jeremy has never once made anything that looked pretty, but his food tastes a lot better than his dad’s, and probably better than the Quaker ‘Dinosaur Eggs’ instant oatmeal packet Michael’s holding. 

“Someday when I don't have work.” 

“Maybe cooking could be a way that I contribute to the house. You know, since sometimes I suck, and…”

“How about dinner?” Michael says it like it’s an offer. “I'd be, like, mega thrilled if you made dinner. Beyond thrilled. Dinner would be of great value to Christine and me, just like you are.” 

“Wait, what?” 

“Seven thirty. Eggs with stuff in them, _a la Jeremy Heere_. You up to it?” 

“Yeah.” 

Michael busies himself at the counter, boiling water in the electric kettle, and pouring it into a mug along with his oatmeal. Then, he stirs his oatmeal, and disappears into his room, leaving it to sit on the counter. 

Jeremy takes the opportunity to go through his photos. He swipes through the sofa, the stenciling, the bookshelf, and Christine’s door, finding no irregularities. He gets to the balcony photo, and sees only a black railing and a Squip-free blue sky. 

When Jeremy goes looking for the Squip with his eyes, he always finds him. It’s a no win scenario, like a monster in the closet that only springs into existence if Jeremy gives in to the temptation to open the door. Opening the door should be a way to reassure himself that it’s fake, but it never works, because believing in the monster enough to check is what gives it power. The photos are a work around. The camera can't detect something that only lives in Jeremy’s imagination. The photos let Jeremy know that the world is still safe and mundane, even if some of the things he’s been through certainly weren't. 

The Michael photo comes after the balcony photos, and it’s also Squipless. Jeremy lingers on it, initially because shirtless is a good look for Michael, but also because having a picture allows him to analyze Michael’s expression in a way that he can't when Michael is there with him. His eyes are a bit wide, and there is the beginning of a smile on his face, either in greeting or relief. There’s something resigned there as well, though maybe Jeremy is just imagining it, something that says Michael knows exactly what a mess Jeremy is, and is mentally preparing himself to get stuck with him again. 

“Hey!”

Christine plops down in the seat across from Jeremy. 

“Michael looks hot in that picture,” she observes. 

“Yeah, he… wait… What? Why? Why do you say these things?” 

Christine shrugs. “On a scale of this girl hit snooze twelve times and is wearing the clothes she slept in, and this girl verifiably did _not_ sleep in her current outfit and also her hairbrush is not hopelessly lost, where would you rank me on the put together adult human being scale?”

“Five?”

Christine does a little fist pump. “Awesome! Five I can deal with! Speaking of which, I should be gone like ten minutes ago. Bye Jeremy!” Turning from Jeremy, she cups her hands around her mouth. “Later Michael!” she yells in the direction of Michael’s bedroom door. 

“Later Christine!” Michael yells back. She’s long gone when Michael emerges, a few minutes later, wearing a Best Buy t-shirt, and khakis. 

“You look like a fake corporate version of yourself,” Jeremy says. 

“Uh-huh. So sue me for having a job.” 

Actually, Michael has two jobs, but when he's designing posters and doing paperwork at the LGBT center, he gets to keep his retro-stoner-gay aesthetic. Right now, the only indication of it is his pac-man tattoo. 

Michael eats his oatmeal sitting on the kitchen table. Then, he grabs a ramen packet and a thermos. He breaks up the noodles to put them inside, re-boils the water in the kettle, and pours it over them. 

“It’s lunch and a weapon,” he explains to Jeremy. “If my manager flirts with me today, I'm pouring this in his lap.” 

“He does that?”

“It’s gross, man.” 

“You could quit. Or tell somebody! I'll go with you if you want to complain to somebody.”

Michael doesn't answer right away, and Jeremy has a sinking suspicion that it's because he sounds like he's talking about going with him to tell the teacher on a school yard bully. Jeremy has no idea if the situation is more or less serious than that, but it's _different_ , and Michael doesn't need his ex-boyfriend telling his boss that his other boss is being a slime ball. 

“I'm handling it okay,” Michael says, lowering his voice. “I had this revelation when I was smoking last night. I don't want to like my job. Work shouldn't be my passion. _Passion_ should be my passion.”

Jeremy nods slowly. Michael would argue that he comes up with his best ideas while stoned, but that isn't always the case. “What kind of passion are you going for?” 

“The kind that I haven't got all the way figured out yet.” 

“Same. I know how that is. Honestly, I don't even know what my major is gonna be. I'm majoring in getting a degree. I never expected to get this old.” 

“Hey,” Michael says, “first of all, don't talk like twenty-three is ancient, because it isn't. Second of all, don't talk like twenty-three is ancient, because I'll freak out.” 

“I’m not saying twenty-three is old. I'm saying—” Jeremy trails off. He doesn't want to say what he was thinking of saying, and that Michael doesn't need to hear it. Michael has dealt with Jeremy’s fatalistic streak enough for several lifetimes— and besides, Jeremy is over all that now. 

“Jer?”

Jeremy drums his fingers against the table, searching for words that aren't heavy. “I'm saying—What I'm saying is, it's not like we’re thirty or whatever. Or spinsters. We’re not spinsters.”

Some of the concern in Michael’s face fades. “Spinsters?” Michael repeats, with soft amusement that makes Jeremy’s palms sweat. 

“It’s a word! That people use!” 

“People like heroines in regency era costume dramas.” 

“You use outdated terms all the time,” Jeremy says. “You have no right to get on my case when I do. So…uh…forsooth!”

“Forsooth, man. I'll see you after work.” 

“Okay,” Jeremy agrees, trying to rub the redness out of his face. “Good luck burning your manager’s junk off with hot soup.” 

“Thanks, bud. Good luck with your classes.”

After Michael leaves, Jeremy makes one more round with his phone camera, and snags some oatmeal for himself. Then, he makes a cup of tea, and sits down to start his coursework. 

It's good to be learning again, not that Jeremy exactly stopped before. If anything, he's read more during the last few years of not being at school than he'd ever read when books were being assigned to him. He's even read some of those academically mandated Good Books that smart people are supposed to read. He knows more about coping methods, and keeping himself together without Michael always there to do it for him. 

These last four gap years haven't been a waste. That's an area where Jeremy’s dad always encouraged him.

 

————————-  
————————-  
————————-

 

“Not being in school doesn't mean you have to stop learning,” Jeremy's dad told him during the nine hour drive home from Burlington College. Jeremy wasn’t sure. A part of him wanted to turn back, but if he did that, then his dad would've driven all that way for nothing. 

Regrets aside, Jeremy’s first day back was spent in a state of giddy elation. He'd _wanted_ to drop out of college, and then he’d _done_ it! Compared to the months of agonizing about whether or not he really should, and whether or not he could leave Michael like that, making the call and having his father respond to it had been like magic. 

On Jeremy’s second day back, he grabbed pizza with Rich, and it was good to see him. Rich was lively and Rich-like. Jeremy was lively too, but not very Jeremy-like at all. There was this weird sensation, like his blood was vibrating through his veins and his heart was squeezing just a little too tightly with every beat, but he laughed too loud, and he didn't stutter once. 

The third and fourth days were the worst. That was when Jeremy’s doubt allowed the Squip to worm its way into the uncertain places in his mind, with a deafening voice that drowned out everything else. Jeremy was afraid of what he'd do if he moved, afraid of who would be controlling his limbs. For a day and a half he didn't leave his bed, not for anything. He barely moved. He let the Squip mock him for pissing himself, rather than getting up to go to the bathroom where the pills and razors were kept, and even after that he stayed where he was. He kept his eyes closed, whispered his mantras, ignored his dad’s attempts to rouse him. He knew that he was scaring his his dad, but that wasn't all that important in the face of the realization that he was every bit as disgusting and bad as the Squip said he was. 

Somehow, Jeremy’s dad left, and Rich then Rich was there. Rich dragged Jeremy into the shower with his clothes still on, icy water blasting. 

It worked. 

The cold was a shock to the system, and Jeremy was conditioned to respond to shocks. Jeremy changed into a t-shirt and sweatpants after at Rich’s orders, because orders were another thing he'd been conditioned to respond to. If Rich had been just a little nicer, if he'd tried to coax or cajole, Jeremy would've never listened. 

They went downstairs, and sat across from each other on the couch, Jeremy quiet but shivering like he'd shake out of his own skin. 

“First thing’s first,” Rich said. “Your dad is on his way to Vermont to pick up the Red from Michael.” 

A nod. 

“Did Michael take all Red to school with him?” 

A shake of the head. 

“Didn't think he'd be that dumb. We’ll go get some from the Mell house. I could've told your dad that, but he looked like he wanted to have his big goddamned hero moment, and who was I to deny him a sixteen hour quest to save his only son?” 

Another nod.

“Don't look so fucking grateful. It's overwhelming.” 

“Sorry.”

“What for?” 

“It’s just… I know your dad wouldn't…”

Rich smacked himself across the forehead. “That’s not what we’re talking about, numbnuts.” 

A satisfied hum from the Squip. _Numbnuts_ he repeated, like he appreciated the novelty of the insult. 

“Jeremy?” 

Jeremy shook his head vigorously to clear it.

“Look, Jeremy. I don't mean anything when I call you shit like that, but I've got to keep your attention somehow, and that isn't exactly easy right now.” 

“I know. I'll pay attention.” 

“Okay, so the way I see it, you’re starting to have second thoughts about the whole quitting school and probably changing your entire life path and maybe killing your relationship with Michael thing.” 

“I… a little?” 

“That's what you gotta stop doing. I barely scraped through high school, and I'm surviving. That's where you need to be at. A college drop out is what you are, so own that shit, and don't apologize for it.” 

“But what if I made a mistake?” 

“It's your mistake to make! The technology in your head gets no say! And it's not like going to college was ever the only thing you could do. There's tons of stuff that you can do. So, let's get some Red in you, then get hammered. Fuck college, and fuck Squips.” 

Jeremy didn't get hammered that night. He went with Rich to get the Red from Michael’s concerned mothers, brought it home, drank it, and spent twenty minutes screaming while it did whatever it did to his brain. 

Rich was a good friend. He didn't say much, and he didn't fuss like Michael tended to, but he stuck around while Jeremy was boring and headachy. Mostly, Rich ate and played games on Jeremy’s Switch, but he was there, and when Jeremy’s dad came home to find Jeremy scrolling through his phone on the couch, with Rich perched in front of his knees wolfing down a sandwich, he'd been palpably relieved. 

That didn't mean that Jeremy got out of taking another dose of Red. His dad had gone so far to get it, plus he didn't know that Jeremy had already gotten his own via other methods. Cue another scream fest. 

It got easier from then on out. Jeremy hung with Rich a lot, and sometimes Jake. Sophomore year of high school, Jeremy would've never been able to imagine a scenario where his two biggest bullies became his main support system, but that was where he was at. NYU wasn't so far away, so he saw Christine one weekend. He opened Skype to call Michael every evening, and chickened out each time. 

Two weeks into coming home, Jeremy’s dad started talking again about how Jeremy could learn things without going to school, so he gave it a try. He picked some books to read from the library, and started watching cooking tutorials on YouTube. He downloaded the Memrise Czech course, because it was free, and he vaguely remembered his great grandma being from there. It was something to do. 

Finally, he found it in him to call Michael. He poured himself a cup of Red, and placed it on the corner of his desk. He couldn't see the Squip, but he could feel it lurking, ready to pounce if Michael didn’t answer. Just at the moment when Jeremy was ready to give up, Michael’s face flickered onto the screen. He stared at Jeremy, and Jeremy stared back. 

“Hey,” Jeremy said to break the silence. 

“Hey,” Michael said, and nothing else. Jeremy couldn't handle it. He turned his attention to untangling a thread on his cardigan. When he looked up at Michael, he was staring at some point above the computer. 

Michael cleared his throat. That was Jeremy’s cue to speak.

“…School,” he said. “Uh… how is school?” 

“Better than I thought it would be,” Michael said. “Which is weird, right? Turns out Steve from across the hall is cool, so I've been hanging with him some. I joined the gay student union. They’re sympathetic to the whole my boyfriend peaced out on me thing. You'll be happy to know Dr. Koony still doesn't come to class. Last time he didn't show up, he sent out an e-mail about how he couldn't come because he needed to go to an ATM, and he gave us all a hundred on the next test as an apology. I’ve got our room to myself for the foreseeable future. I'm getting through.” 

Jeremy nodded.

“I miss you though.” 

“Are we still… are we still friends?” Jeremy didn't dare to ask if they were still dating. He was lucky that Michael would even speak to him.

“We were learning in history class about the development of electricity and they had a quote from Charles Dickens talking about electronic communication, which was weird ‘cause I think of Dickens as being closer to the dinosaurs than electronic communication. You know, insofar as I think of Dickens at all, which isn't a lot.”

“Michael?”

A deep breath. “We’re still friends.” 

Jeremy swallowed several times in quick succession. The inside of his throat felt slimy, thick, and viscous. 

“I get that you didn't leave to screw me over,” Michael said. “And also, like I said, I'm not screwed over. I'm fine.”

Jeremy nodded. 

“What about you?” Michael asked.

“I'm ok.” 

“That's good man. So… It's like this. I'm fine. I'm rocking the college thing, and that's cool and… I guess what I need from you is for you to make an effort. I don't mean like an effort not to freak out or whatever. That's kinda wired into you by now- I get it. I _accept_ it. I mega accept it. But… I just need you to make an effort to contact me and shit. Write e-mails, talk to me here, come to visit… I don't really care. ‘Cause, I talked about it with Christine, and with my moms, and on an intellectual level I understand that you leaving had more to do with you than me, but you just _left_ , man.”

“I am _so_ sorry,” Jeremy said, the words coming out in a damp rush of breath. Michael always rambled, but not usually in this way, where he could hardly look at Jeremy, and was busy fiddling with something off screen. There was a building tenseness in Michael’s posture, and a building wetness in his eyes, and Jeremy knew enough about Michael and his rare but spectacular emotional crashes to know that he was barreling towards one. He was holding it together for now, but the last time Jeremy had seen Michael like this, he'd also tried very hard to keep his feelings under wraps, up until the sound of somebody slamming a door in another room had sent him over the edge. 

“It's okay,” Michael reiterated. “I'm fine. My skin is clear, my grades are good, I've got a shipment of discontinued Kool-aid flavors in the mail, and I found a quarter in the laundry room earlier today. That's where I'm at. You’re in charge of maintaining diplomatic relations.” 

“…okay.” _Diplomatic relations_ was a weird way of putting it, but that wasn't something Jeremy was going to argue about right now. 

“Perfect,” Michael said, with a hand gesture that was probably meant to look dismissive, but came off half frenzied. “So, we’re set. Later gator. Michael out.” 

————-  
————-  
————-

The classes Jeremy is taking online with Westchester Community College include Freshman Seminar, Literature and Written Expression 101, Math and the World, and World History 101. All the 101 classes are kinda a drag. If he'd just stayed in school another few week the first time around, he could’ve completed first semester, and gotten a few core classes out of the way for all that tuition money.

Math sucks, and Jeremy sucks at it. He reads about how to do the stuff, reads it again, and then gets up to walk around and photograph things. He does a few problems, and then gets up to walk around and photograph things some more. He takes four more photo breaks before he finishes the assignment, so math kind of doubles as physical exercise. He writes that down in his moleskine book of failures. 

Freshman Seminar is about how to get the most out of online classes, and how to organize and schedule to make sure all your work gets completed. That's cool. Jeremy likes that. He's going to go out and buy a planner later, and it's going to make his whole life worth living. 

In World History, Jeremy starts off learning about prehistory and cave paintings. He would be willing to bet that Michael knows everything about that. At school, Michael was both the best and worst student imaginable, because whenever he found anything the least bit interesting he'd suddenly have ten tabs open on his computer as he researched everything about it, but whenever he didn't like something, he'd ignore it. Back in high school, he'd once failed a midterm because he didn't care about France. They hadn't learned that much about France, but the teacher had said something about it earlier in the semester, and Michael had tuned her out from that moment on. 

(It wasn't even that Michael hated France, or that he had a blanket disinterest in the country. Sometimes he liked it well enough. It'd just been the wrong subject on the wrong day.)

Lit class begins with a “fun” exercise, about reading a bunch of poems, and matching them with the era they were written in. It's okay, except one of the poems is in old English, and Jeremy has to e-mail the professor, ‘cause he's not sure if he's supposed to learn old English and read it, or just deduce that it's really old based on the fact that he doesn't know what any of the words mean. Maybe he's supposed to know what the words mean. Maybe everybody else knows, and school is an exercise in futility. 

Jeremy gets up for another photography break. He also washes his hands twice. That's the kind of mood he's in. Then, it's back to poems.

There are tons of poems.

The one by Yeats is hardcore. It starts out like —

_Turning and turning in the widening gyre  
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;  
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;_

Jeremy has to look up the word for ‘gyre’, which is like a circle, but once he figures that out he can super relate. He saw a presentation about falconry once. It was at a ren faire that Christine brought him to. There’d been a guy with a chainmail glove and a hawk perched upon it. The bird had been unperturbed by the leather hood it wore, though it obscured its eyes. The hood was to keep the naturally skittish animal from becoming scared and stressed, the handler had said, yet once released, the bird had been full of majesty and precision as it caught a sparrow on command. 

The thing that Jeremy misses about giving in to the Squip is the protective barrier that it put between him and the rest of the world. It could take things that were too hard for Jeremy to look at and erase them. Its orders were such that even Jeremy could follow, and look good doing it. The only time in Jeremy’s life when he hasn't felt lost was when he’d had the Squip going full force. Sure, the Squip came with hidden costs, the eventual destruction of humanity being a big one, but it'd been so intoxicating at the time that Jeremy had found it hard to care.

Jeremy has broken down a few too many times since getting rid of the Squip. If he falls apart, is it because he has no center? 

Picking up his phone, Jeremy stands up again. He takes half a dozen photos, stops for a puff of his inhaler, then takes half a dozen more. It does the trick. When he returns to the couch, he's breathing normally, and able to reread the poem. On the second look through it becomes clear that Yeats was going for Christian apocalyptic imagery (and maybe a dig at corrupt politicians or something), not making allusions to the scary nanotechnology of the future, or trying specifically to make Jeremy uncomfortable. The poem has nothing to do with Jeremy or his situation. 

Still, there’s something about the gyre— about the cyclical imagery. Snatching up his moleskine, Jeremy draws a point with a spiral emanating out from it. The point, Jeremy decides, is the incident with the Squip. It's a single, undeniably traumatic event, that Jeremy has been fleeing from as best he can. The problem is, he can't simply take off running in a straight line. He has to circle, and as he circles, he keeps meeting the same kinds of pitfalls and unhealthy coping methods over and over again. They're never as bad as they were the first time, however. There's a slow but definite outward progression. Jeremy still struggles a lot, but he's not on his first ring around the Squipcident, or even his ninth. He's probably on the twentieth or twenty-fifth loop around by now, and that's an accomplishment. 

Jeremy tears the first few pages, the ones detailing his failures, out of his moleskine. Then, since he's feeling dramatic, he rips the page with the poem out of his Literature and Written Expression textbook. That's enough studying for today.

—————-

Most of Jeremy’s afternoon is spent playing mindless iPhone games. Then, at around six o’clock, he remembers that he's supposed to make dinner. A quick look in the fridge tells Jeremy that Christine and Michael do not keep it exactly well stocked. He’ll have to do something about that. 

Map blindness and not being able to chop vegetables so that they’re all the same size are both dyspraxia traits. They’re also both annoying as hell, but it's nice to know that those issues stem from something other than the time Jeremy let a defective tic-tac run amuck in his grey matter. Besides, Jeremy makes it work. He finds a grocery store by walking in a straight line for twenty-five minutes and getting lucky. He goes back to the apartment, and chops up erratically sized peppers and onions to cook with. The wonky vegetables will be okay. Christine and Michael are the last people to care about that kind of stuff. 

Vegetable prepping aside, Jeremy waits until Michael gets home to start the omelettes, which is a smart choice, because he arrives twenty minutes later than he said he would. 

(Jeremy is, of course, hanging in the kitchen wasting time, because cooking is what he's got in his mind to do, and he can't possibly do anything else until that's finished.)

“How was work?” Jeremy asks, but Michael doesn't hear. He's still got his headphone on. He flops down at the table, removes his glasses, and closes his eyes. 

“Uh…”

Jeremy waits. 

And waits. 

He tries the melted off hot plate controls, glancing back at Michael every few seconds, as he figures them out by trial and error.

Still nothing from Michael, so Jeremy finds a frying pan and gets started. The first egg he cracks misses the pan and goes on the counter. Michael doesn't budge. Jeremy has better luck with the second. He beats it, and watches it bubble, but this isn't the right way to make omelettes. He's doing it wrong, and Michael isn't talking, and he hates Jeremy, so he'd better do it right.

“How was work?” Jeremy repeats, the instant Michael slides his headphones off. He turns his attention away from his cooking. His voice is too loud and too urgent. Michael slides the headphones back on, but he fiddles with the volume control on the cord, until Jeremy can no longer hear the dull hum of his music. 

“I'm too geeky for the geek squad,” Michael says. 

(Michael is talking. Jeremy can relax.)

“What happened?” 

“This guy came in with stomach pains…”

“At Best Buy?” 

“To the back office, where I was sitting with one of the other guys, trying to fix this really fucked up computer. And he was all like— Jeremy, your eggs are burning!” 

“He was like…? Shit! Sorry.” Jeremy gets up to turn the hotplate off. “What happened?” Jeremy asks again.

‘The guy was all like, hey nerds, medical care is expensive, but I've heard you’re smart. Could you help me out here?’”

“What’d you do?” 

Jeremy grabs a new egg from the carton, hovers a moment, then stops to sit across from Michael. As Michael speaks, Jeremy passes the egg back and forth between his hands.

“I listened to him explain his symptoms, and suggested it might be gas, which made him high key offended, so he asked to speak to my manager. Luckily, he didn't get that far, because he then fell on the floor screaming, and I called 911. Turns out his appendix burst, but now he wants to sue me for the cost of the ambulance.” 

“… I'm ninety percent sure that doesn't qualify as being too geeky. Do you think he can actually do that?” 

“Eh, it’s more the fact that I went all zombie mode after. Co-workers trying to talk about stuff when you don't wanna talk is hard, man. Kinda needed to block them, but couldn't. No headphones at work. Anyway, I looked it up online, and the Good Samaritan law has me covered as far as lawsuits go.” 

“You can block me out if you want to,” Jeremy offers, as it dawns on him that he should've been letting Michael do that from the start. Stupid. “I'm cool with you chilling out to music or whatever.” 

“You have no idea how much I appreciate that,” Michael says. He does not, however, turn his music up. “Did you learn stuff today?” he asks. 

“A few things.”

“Like what?” 

“There was this poem, and—”

The door opens, and Christine comes bursting in, loaded down with three boxes of pizza. 

“Miss me?” she asks. The smell of burnt, wasted eggs hangs heavy in there air. 

“No,” says Jeremy, which wins him a weird look from both Michael and Christine. “I mean yes. But can't eat that, because we’re eating this.” He brandishes his egg. “I just have to make it.” 

Christine is quick to adapt. “Oh,” she says. She turns to deposit the pizza boxes in the fridge. “Family dinner! Nice! We’ll have the pizza for breakfast, and breakfast for dinner. Cold pizza makes the best breakfast.” 

Jeremy gets up to make the dinner, while Christine leans against the counter, listening to Michael fill her in on what happened at work. Christine vows to destroy anybody who dares to sue Michael, and maybe the whole of Best Buy while she's at it. This time, Jeremy doesn't break or burn anything. He sets out to make three perfect omelettes, and finishes up with three at least okay ones. 

“Seriously,” says Michael, upon receiving his, “this’ll be the most not-terrible thing we’ve eaten since moving in.” 

Jeremy has to resist the urge to hide his face in his shirt like some kind of dumb ass turtle, especially when Michael takes his arm to guide him down into his chair. “It was easy. I just—”

“Saved us from scurvy is what you did,” says Christine. “I'm _this_ close to catching scurvy.” She grabs a chair, and turns it around so she's straddling it as she sits down. She takes a bite her food. “Yep. This is good. There's definitely vegetables in this.” 

“I looked on snopes, and the thing about there being tapeworm eggs in off-brand ramen noodles is a myth, but if it wasn't, I'd be teeming with tapeworms,” says Michael. 

Christine's fork stops halfway to her mouth, and her face scrunches up.

“Don't give me that look. It's true! Jer, aren't you gonna eat?” 

It's only at that moment that Jeremy realizes he's been too distracted listening to his friends banter ( and probably staring at them with moon eyes ) to pay attention to his food. It almost feels like he should gush about it too, just because everybody else is, and in social situations the best way to blend in is to just do what everybody else is doing. Problem is, the omelettes are his, so that’d come off as self-centered. Jeremy settles on stuffing his face, and listening to Christine ramble about her botched early morning audition, and her after school program. 

As dinner goes on, Jeremy finds that Christine says more and more, while Michael says less and less. Besides that, Michael is slumped over to one side, using his fork to trace idle designs in the grease leftover on his bare plate. When Christine suggests another movie night, Michael lets out a heavy breath. 

“Hey,” he says, “Jeremy, you’ve got the bedroom. Could you and Christine go in there and watch something on your laptop? I'm not feeling it tonight.” 

“…sure,” Jeremy says. 

“No problem,” Christine adds, much more brightly. Jeremy stands up, and Christine takes him by the arm, leading him to the bedroom before he has time to clear the table or apologize for whatever he did. 

—————-

Time passes, and things begin to fall into a routine at the Crane Street apartment. Jeremy cooks, photographs, and does school work. Christine goes to auditions, and her after school program. Michael works precisely thirty-nine hours and forty-five minutes a week at Best Buy, and then puts in another twelve hours at the LGBT youth center. 

There’s a pattern with Michael on Best Buy days. He starts out the morning cheerful enough, comes home with his headphones and hood up, then perks himself up to hang for a bit with Jeremy and Christine. Usually it only lasts about an hour or so, before he deflates, starts answering questions in monosyllables, or straight up ghosts them. 

On Jeremy’s sixth day at the Crane Street apartment, and Michael does it again. Christine is out this time, and without her to redirect him Jeremy can't help sputtering out half a dozen apologies. He's not sure what he did wrong, but he's sure he did something, and it's ruining Michael’s life, just like he ruins everything. 

“Jer.” Michael stops him with a hand on his shoulder. He's looking past Jeremy rather than at him. “Can we just—” Michael lets his hand fall, fists clenching and then unclenching.

Jeremy doesn't say anything, and Michael doesn't either. Then, Michael sucks in a breath through his nose. 

“Let's sit down,” Michael says. He pulls Jeremy to the couch with him. “Remember right after the Squip, how sometimes you just didn't want to talk, so we didn't talk?” 

Jeremy nods. “That was stupid. I'm sorry about that.” 

“For fuck’s sake.” Michael leans back against the headboard of the couch, removing his glasses to stare at the ceiling with unfocused eyes. “First of all,” he says in a dull tone, “not stupid. Second of all, I hate Best Buy. I hate my manager, I hate having to smile and talk to people I don't know all day, and I hate that I get home and wanna hang with you and Christine, but my brain feels like mush.” 

As Michael is talking, Jeremy pulls his feet up into the couch. He sits there with his chin on his knees, and listens. When Michael goes on, Jeremy doesn't say anything right away, but he doesn't stop looking at him. Back in high school, there had been a strange dichotomy between the way that Jeremy experienced Michael, and the way that everybody else did. To Jeremy, Michael was his cheerful, gregarious best friend, who never stopped talking, and was lively and kind in all the ways that Jeremy needed him to be. To everybody else, Michael was somebody else entirely. 

“Can I hold your hand?” Jeremy asks. 

Michael nods, so they sit there, holding hands and not saying anything. Hopefully Michael can't feel Jeremy staring. He's searching for that antisocial headphones kid he always heard so much about, and he think he catches a glimpse of him in the dark circles under Michael’s eyes. 

It was never that there were two versions of Michael, Jeremy knows. It's just that he's used to having the majority of Michael’s warmth and attention. Now Michael’s got to give that to other people, in order to get a paycheck. Retail sucks balls. 

“I'm good.” Michael gives Jeremy’s hand a squeeze, then releases it. “I'm gonna take a shower, and listen to some music by myself. Do computer stuff. All that.” 

“Okay.” Jeremy agrees. They exchange a quick high five, and then Michael is off, slumping his way towards the bathroom to take that shower. 

In the days that come, Jeremy makes a point of not bombarding Michael the minute he gets through the door, not even to feed him. Michael knows damn well that Jeremy likes to cook stuff, and he's good at getting it by himself, and disappearing to do whatever he does to recover after a long day. The effect of the extra space does him good. He's about a hundred times more social when not dragged into it before he's ready, and stuff between him, Jeremy, and Christine are better than ever. It's almost like high school, but without all the romance shit. 

About two weeks after Jeremy’s move, his dad comes to visit. He says it's to give him a gift. More likely it's to check whether or not he's gone off the deep end and tossed all his loser belongings out the window. 

Nonetheless, when Jeremy’s dad shows up, he's carrying a very big box, and a second smaller one. 

“Well,” his dad says, almost before saying _hello_ , “what're you waiting for? Open it!” 

Christine and Michael gather around behind Jeremy. The big box is nearly as tall as Jeremy himself. 

“Which one should I open first?” asks Jeremy. 

“The tall one,” says Michael. “Definitely the tall one.” 

Jeremy takes the box, ripping and fiddling with the tape to get it open. Christine holds the bottom, while he pulls out the thing inside. It's something made of cool metal, and it has three legs. Are they crutches? That makes no sense. A very tall three legged stool without the seat part? 

“Oh cool, a tripod.” Michael leans in closer for a better look. 

“I think I know what's in the other box,” says Christine. 

Jeremy also thinks he knows what she thinks she knows. Sure enough, the second box contains a camera. It's big and heavy, with a great big lens, and a black shutter. It says Nikon on it. Jeremy isn't a camera expert, but he hopes it's not an expensive brand. What is he even going to do with this thing? Take professional quality photos of all the places the Squip might hide? There are two rolls of film in the bottom of the box, and no screen on the camera to allow him to look at the pictures right after taking them. He’ll have to get the pictures developed if he wants to see anything. 

“For the old photography hobby!” Jeremy's dad says, with a hearty dad-laugh.

“I…love… photography,” Jeremy replies weakly. 

“We’ll have to take it out so we can get pictures of stuff that's not the furniture,” says Christine. 

“It's awesome,” Jeremy says. He’ll never use it, but that’s not the kind of thing he's going to tell his dad. He can feel Michael watching him. Michael knows something is up. 

Jeremy’s dad beams down at his son, his face full of false wisdom and genuine affection. “You’re going to have a lot of adventures with this camera,” he says.


	3. Chapter 3 - Christine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: From what I've read, Be More Chill is meant to be set in the near future. Since the characters have graduated college by the time this fic begins, this fic is set in the somewhat more distant near future. Anyway, that's why there are references to musicals and social media platforms that don't currently exist.

Everyone says that the surest way to make yourself hate a song is to set it as your alarm. That's why Christine changes hers to a different musical theatre bop every morning. Today, it's “Other People’s Stories” from Amour, and she's been hitting the snooze button every eight minutes for the last hour. She's cold, she has to use the bathroom, and one of her rabbits (probably Thomas Jefferson, the fluffy bastard) sounds like he's having an a hoedown in his cage. None of this matters in her determination to stay in bed. 

The alarm goes off again. Christine hits snooze. 

The alarm goes off. 

In some other part of the house, Michael calls out his morning goodbyes. Christine rouses herself enough to say goodbye back, then flips over to get another few minutes rest.

The alarm goes off. 

Christine hits snooze.

Christine was up until four AM last night looking at mail order subscription boxes on the internet. It wasn't something she'd planned to do. She'd seen a link to one while scrolling tumblr, and it'd led her to a website selling thousands of them, most of which she now knows a ton of information about. It’s not like Christine really wants to join the spice of the month club, or receive a crate jammed with at least (!) fifty dollars (!) worth of novelty (!) mermaid (!!) themed merchandise for a mere (!) thirty (!!) dollars (!!!). It's just that the internet is full of enticing vortexes. Also, Christine hasn't bought anything fun for herself since moving in with Michael. That makes the lure of novelty mermaid boxes about a gazillion times stronger than normal. 

The next time that Christine’s alarm goes off, she pulls herself out of bed. There’s a pen and a Tropicana bottle cap stuck to her leg as she gets up, so she brushes them off onto the floor. Those are just two of the many random objects that should not be in her bed, and now they aren't! They’re on the floor, which is covered in even more random objects. Christine has to step over them on her way to the bathroom. 

Jeremy is sitting around on the couch, reading something on his computer. He gives Christine a wave, and she waves back, then goes about her business. She doesn’t have an audition today, so she’s free until one o’clock, when she’s got to drive down to Spirit Zone, and start her work there. That’s good! It means that she can practice her dance routine for the audition she has tomorrow. 

Christine goes back to her room. She changes out of her pajamas and into a blue lace dress that she found at Goodwill. She pauses in her dressing to feed the rabbits. Thomas is still making a nuisance of himself, but he accepts his pellets and timothy hay gladly. Seymour hides in the back of his cage, ever the shy boy. Jared is on strike until Christine brings him treats, something which Christine does sparingly, because bunnies smell a lot better when not allowed to gorge themselves on yummy fruits and vegetables.

“You are all wonderful monsters,” Christine informs them, as she does every morning. She wouldn't want them to forget, after all. 

From there, it's back to getting dressed. Christine pulls on a pair of leggings, then rummages through three drawers for the sweater she wants to wear. It's grey with red roses, and absolutely no other sweater will do, but she can’t find it anywhere in her drawers. It's not on the floor, or in her bed either. She opens the door of her room. 

“Have you seen my rose sweater?” she calls out to Jeremy. 

“It's hanging on a chair in the kitchen!” Jeremy calls back. 

“Cool!” 

When Christine comes out to get her sweater, Jeremy has that one really expensive notebook of his out, and he's drawing spirals in it. He closes it when he sees her, like he always does, so she only gets a quick glimpse of what he's doing. Christine has no idea why he is so into sketching spirals, or what they mean, but it's very much one of Jeremy’s things at the moment, along with taking pictures of inanimate objects with his phone. He’s got that really nice camera his dad gave him, but it's been a month, and he hasn't used it. 

“Are you going to eat lunch?” Jeremy asks.

“At some point.” 

Once again, Christine goes back to her room. She puts on shoes, socks, and a pink scarf, which reminds her that she forgot to get her sweater out of the kitchen. This time, Jeremy is in there, fishing a carton of leftover drunken noodles out of the fridge. One of the benefits to having the Thai restaurant owners as their landlords is that their incredibly hot twenty-four year old daughter, works at the restaurant beneath the house, and always gives Christine discounts (while stealing her heart, but sometimes that’s the cost of things). 

“Save some of that for me,” Christine tells Jeremy, before going back to her room, because she’s still got a dance to practice, and she doesn't want to eat until after she’s done that. She pushes piles of stuff out of the way, to make a circle of mostly empty space in the midst of the chaos on her floor. She blasts her music, and goes through the four songs that she needs to work on, twice for each song. She follows that up with some deep breathing and vocal exercises. Then, it's back outside. Jeremy is just finishing up his meal, but he stays at the table with Christine, as she gets her noodles into a bowl and digs in. 

“I'm gonna put on a pot of coffee,” Jeremy says. “You want some?”

“Thought you didn't like coffee?” 

“I changed my mind about that yesterday. I'm going to start liking it now. I'll make you a cup.” 

Christine doesn't comment on that. If Jeremy had seemed distressed or in a bad mood, she might have, but he’s neither of those things this morning. He hums softly, as he puts the grinds into the coffee machine.

“I Will Prevail,” Christine says, recognizing the song.

“It's been stuck in my head all week, so thanks for that.” 

“I want to hate Frank Wildhorn, because his plots are overwrought and most of his music is terrible, but every one of his shows has to have that one absolutely amazing song, and it's a crime against humanity. I mean, how dare he?” 

Jeremy leans against the counter, watching Christine eat while he lets the coffee percolate. “I liked all of Jekyll and Hyde.” 

“Me too. Me too. Also Bonnie and Clyde. Yikes. I think I might be a closet Wildhorn fan.” Christine clutches her chest, pretending to swoon onto the table top. Woe is her! At least she’s managed to give Rudolph: the Mayerling Affair a hard miss. 

“I miss doing theatre,” Jeremy says. That was one of the things that Christine and Jeremy shared back in high school. By all accounts, he'd started to look into it in hopes of wooing her, only to accidentally realize that he really dug it in its own right. Christine has been blessed with a lot of people in her life who have endeavored to take an interest in musicals because they care about her, but while Christine’s dads and Michael will gamely join her in discussions of the subtle differences between various productions of Rent (even if they don't know exactly what she’s going on about), they don't get excited the way that Jeremy does. 

(Excited Jeremy is cute. It's been years since Christine felt any desire to act on finding Jeremy cute, but there's still something to be said for the way he trips over words and forgets to be self conscious about it when he's really enthusiastic about something.)

“Bombay Dreams is playing at the Arts Center later this month. Tickets are only twenty, we should go,” Christine tells him. There aren’t nearly enough opportunities for adults who like acting but don't want to do it professionally. Going to see shows is the next best thing.

“We definitely should! And we should get dinner. Cheap dinner, if we’re already spending twenty on tickets. Maybe we should eat at home first, and bring Michael, unless he's at work, which he probably will be. Never mind. I'm making a big thing of it. Let's see Bombay Dreams, and _not_ make a big thing of it. We can get dinner… or not. Michael will probably be at work.” 

Christine grins at him from across the table. “We have time to decide about dinner and Michael and everything. Maybe I'll be famous.” 

Jeremy seems to remember the coffee. He fills two mugs, giving Christine one with cream and tons of sugar, while he takes black coffee for himself. He sits down, and takes a sip, then his head jerks back to look at something behind him. He takes another sip, and does it again. 

“Something up?” Christine asks. 

Jeremy snatches up his phone, then lowers it slowly under Christine's watchful gaze. “Nothing's more up than it usually is,” he says, as if he hasn't been getting jumpier by the day. 

“It's alright if the Squip is bugging you,” says Christine, trying for casual. “Mine gets on my case all the time. Mostly about cleaning my room, but I don't listen to her, because I'm my own person.” 

“Yeah,” Jeremy agrees. “I mean, not about the cleaning thing lately—”

(Christine is well aware that anything with Squips and cleaning is a sore spot for Jeremy.)

“He doesn't like it when I make changes to my life without letting him choose those changes,” Jeremy says. “Or maybe changing things just naturally puts me on edge, and that makes him show up. I'm handling it.” 

“Got it,” Christine says. She knows that she should let it drop from here, but she doesn't. “You don't actually have a photography hobby, do you?” 

Jeremy shakes his head. 

“The pictures are a Squip thing?” she guesses. 

“He doesn't show up in photos, because he's not really there.”

“Ah. I'll have to try that.” Christine's Squip isn't usually as big a problem as Jeremy’s, but she doesn't want Jeremy to feel strange. Besides, Squip coping methods always seem silly when Christine’s Squip is dormant, but can be lifesavers when she decides to give her grief. 

“Would it be okay with you if I asked a question that the Squip has kinda been bugging me to ask?” 

“Are you okay asking those questions?” 

“It's not… it’s not like, a bad question. And if I just did the opposite of what the Squip wanted me to do all the time, instead of evaluating for myself whether or not it's a good idea, I'd never wash my face again. And… like, washing my face is a good thing, right? It doesn't hurt anyone, and all I get out of not doing it is a dirty face.”

“Okay,” Christine agrees, though she does, in fact, make a point of not doing the things that her Squip tells her to. “What's your question?”

“It's just… and you can be honest about this… why did you and Michael decide to get a place without me?” 

Jeremy is sitting straight and purposely composed as he asks. He takes a sip of his coffee, and waits for Christine's answer. 

“Oh, Jeremy.” 

 

“Like I said, you don't have to tell me. Or I can move out if you want.” 

In truth, Christine hadn't been thinking about Jeremy when the seeds of moving in with Michael had first been planted. It had started out with her and Michael bemoaning their totally not-a-problem situation, of having wonderful gay parents who would do anything for them, and yet finding the whole getting a degree, only to move home and be coddled and looked after once more kind of a let down. Chloe had gotten her parents to pay for her apartment, which neither Christine nor Michael could ever imagine doing. On the other end of the spectrum, Brooke was paying her father a stupid amount of rent, and Rich claimed to be going on a road trip with his brother, but actually they were both living in his brother’s truck.

Christine had been the one to start things between her and Michael. She'd found out online that the Desert of Maine (the only desert in snowy New England!) was up for sale, and suggested that they buy it and try homesteading. Michael had countered with a website where they could buy a private island. Weeks and weeks of sending each other suggestions for ridiculous housing arrangements, ranging from villas, to volcanoes, to discount port-a-potties that could be rented out by the hour, had cumulated in Michael sending Christine a link to an ad for the Crane Street house. They'd gushed at each other about how it was actually sensible, done price calculations, and gone to look at it, still half thinking that it was all a joke. Then, they'd borrowed and scrimped enough money together to pay the deposit, and moved in. 

Michael had paid a lot more towards getting them into the house than Christine. By that time, he'd already been working two jobs for several months. Now, one of those jobs is different, but he's still paying a lot more towards rent than Christine is. 

“I guess we just have poor impulse control,” Christine says, because now that she's thinking of how much the two jobs thing gets to Michael, the occasional worry that this might all be a mistake is at the forefront of her mind, 

“Okay,” says Jeremy, “but how do you move into an entire apartment on impulse?” 

“You did.” 

Jeremy scratches at his neck. 

“Totally the right decision, by the way,” Christine says. She doesn't know if she's reassuring Jeremy, or herself. “Who cares if your Squip hates it? The rest of us are having a blast.”

“Right,” says Jeremy. 

“This place is perfect!” 

“It is.” 

“Except for the two hundred year old cemetery that used to be underneath it, and the occasional paranormal activity.” 

“Wait, what?!” 

“I'm joking,” Christine says with a smile. Another fun thing about both Jeremy and Michael is that they tend to take sarcasm one hundred percent seriously. “In other news, they want me to direct a musical for teenagers down at the Spirit Zone. Any ideas? I was thinking maybe Spelling Bee, but I'd feel weird introducing My Unfortunate Erection into their lexicon of show tunes. I mean, I knew it when I was their age, but I found it all on my own, you know? These kids are practically infants!” 

“How about Cats?” 

(Jeremy is the only person under fifty Christine has met who likes Cats the musical.)

“Half of Andrew Lloyd Webber was a mistake, and the other half was Jesus Christ Superstar.” 

“Like you wouldn't take a role in an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical if it was offered to you.” 

Christine has a story about that! She leans into Jeremy across the table. “I needed to try out for the Starlight Express Tour. Non Equity, you know. Gotta take what chances I can get. Anyway, do you know that one? It's performed on roller skates, do you know it? I had to get Michael to teach me. It was hours and hours. He's good at it. I'm glad I didn't get the part, ‘cause Starlight is mad sexist, but preparing for try outs was fun.” 

“I bet Michael loved that.” 

“It was nice to see him so happy.” 

“Yeah.” Jeremy taps his fingers against the table. “About that…”

“It's just his job,” Christine assures. “He's perked up a lot since you moved in, you know. We used to go days without really seeing each other, except to say ‘hi’ and ‘bye’. That's something nobody tells you about moving in with your friends. It's not like this big never ending slumber party. Everyone has their own stuff to deal with.” 

“That's true.”

“Speaking if which—” Christine gets up to throw her cup and bowl in the sink “—I better get to work. Don't wanna be as late for that as I was getting up.” 

——————

The teen programs at the Spirit Center are the most challenging for Christine. Little kids, generally speaking, respond to her well. Seven year olds don't know yet whether or not they like theatre, but Christine's classes are fun enough to make sure that they come out with a firm love of the stage. The teens already have definite opinions on whether or not Shakespeare is stuffy, or musicals are dumb, and sometimes Christine comes on too strong in her boundless enthusiasm. 

When she was a teenager, Christine used to find herself floundering in almost all of her social interactions. It isn't much of surprise that she still doesn't know what to do with that age range. Unfortunately, she can't do what she did in high school— build a wall of radical self love, and forget about anyone who has a problem with that. Her job is to engage. 

At least the teen group is small— just four girls, two boys, and a non-binary kid. Christine has them sat in a circle, in the middle of a stage that always feels too big for them. 

“So,” Christine starts, “Last semester’s production of Arsenic and Old Lace had its hiccups, but I'm proud to say it came off a lot better than the production we did back at my high school.” She doesn't mention that Arsenic and Old Lace was the first (but not the most notable) instance of poisoning during a Middleborough High production. She also doesn't bring up that the biggest issue with the Spirit Zone’s production was the almost complete lack of an audience, due to Christine accidentally putting the wrong date on the posters advertising the show. 

One of the girls, named Tina, puts up her hand. “Can we do Absolutely Amy?” 

“Uhg,” says another girl, Molly. “That show’s so cringy.” 

“It's about being yourself!” 

“At the stage door last week, a cast member’s grandmother got trampled by rabid fans.” 

“Not all fans are like that!” 

“He had to get on Tweetagram Book and tell off the fan base for putting his grandma in the hospital!”

“I wanna do Godspell,” says Thomas, one of the boys. Thomas, Tina, and Molly have the distinction of being the three natural theatre kids in the bunch, but they've never once agreed on anything, other than that prancing around on stage is pretty awesome. Thomas always wants to do shows that promote good Christian values, Tina always wants to do whatever is popular, and Molly never offers any opinion on what she wants to do, but she loves to speak out against everybody else's. 

“I have a list of possibilities,” Christine says. She takes out the notepad, where she scribbled down her list, while waiting for the kids to arrive. Some ideas are better than others. “My friend told me we should do Cats, but in retrospect, that's a horrible, and I can't believe I wrote it down. I also wrote down Spelling Bee, which we’re not doing. Lightning Thief?” 

Tina claps her hands together. 

“No,” hisses Molly. 

Christine goes through another six shows with the kids, before alighting on Little Women: the Musical. Kit, who usually spends the program drawing pictures and pointedly ignoring Christine, puts up their hand. 

“If you do that one, I'll try out for Jo,” they say. 

“Isn't one of the sisters named Amy?” says Tina. “Like in Actually Amy? I want to play that one.” 

Thomas inclines his head, as if to suggest that he can do Little Women. Maybe he knows that the first scene is set on Christmas morning, or maybe he's used to his suggestions being shot down by the others, and he's already given up on having any influence on group decision making. 

“Let's open it up for a vote,” Christine suggests. “All in favor of Little Women put up your hands.” 

Tina, Kit, and Molly put up their hands. Two of the other kids, Ashley and Hung, raise their hands as well. 

“I think Godspell should at least be an option,” says Thomas, in a last ditch effort.

“We can do that!” says Christine. “So, who wants Godspell?” 

Thomas puts up his hand. 

That just leaves Adib, the only other boy in the group, who wants to know if there are any roles for guys that don't involve romance, because he's not into playing romantic scenes. 

“You can be Laurie's grandpa,” Christine suggests, which wins him over. That means that Thomas is Laurie by default, and try outs are more and less null. The next step for Christine will be petitioning her boss to make the royalty payments, and getting the scripts together. 

Hung puts up her hand. “Does it, like, have to be a musical?” she asks. “Could we write our own script, but with no songs?” 

“Who ever heard of theatre without songs?” cries Tina. 

“Maybe we can have a couple of songs,” Hung concedes. “But, like, maybe we could choose them ourselves? And I could write it?”

“That sounds exciting!” Christine agrees. Hung, who is used to fading into the background, pulls a decidedly not excited face, but she gathers herself enough to jut out her chin and nod. 

“I can get it done by next week,” Hung says. 

“Perfect.” This time, Christine keeps her voice quieter, trying for the role of warm but unimpassioned mentor. Inside, her mind is racing with ideas for costumes, and blocking, and whether or not they can get more money for sets, since they won't need to pay royalties if Hung’s writing. 

Everybody is talking at once, until Ashley inclines her head to make it known that she would like a turn to speak. “I'll make the posters,” she says, glowering at Christine. 

“That's… fair,” Christine has to admit. The happy somersaults in her stomach turn into unhappy ones, then stop. 

“My mom texted me,” Kit says. “She's waiting outside to pick me up.” 

Christine takes out her own phone, to check the time. The end of her sessions always seem to creep up without her noticing. It's more of a problem with her younger groups, who are often just as wrapped up in everything that is going on as Christine herself. 

As Christine drives home that night, she reminds herself that she is going to make this the Spirit Zone’s best play ever. She's a talented and responsible adult! She's got this. She just has to organize, and think of new ways to encourage her kids, who for once have all taken initiative in one way or another. Theatre truly is a thing of awesome and transformative power.

————

Later that night, Michael knocks on Christine's door. 

“Hey.” 

“Hey!”

Michael thrusts out a bag of store brand Dorito knock-offs, which is a sign that he wants to talk, and is prepared to offer snacks in return for her company. Jeremy has the bedroom tonight, and is listening to Wonderland in there, loud enough for Christine to hear. It gives her the rush of triumph that she always gets from sending Jeremy into a show tune binge. 

“What's new, stranger?” Christine says, as she and Michael sit down on the couch. “Work today was epic. It was a blast. The kids are really getting into the show we’re doing. Even Kit and Hung! Not only did Kit talk today, they cast themselves in a lead role. And Hung’s a writer! I didn't know she was a writer, but she is!” 

Michael reaches for a chip out of Christine’s bag. “That sounds out of character,” he says. “I mean, it's great, and I’m hella happy you’re getting through to them, but did you check them for Squips?” 

“Are you getting warnings on the network?” 

“No. Which usually foretells something big to come.” 

“Yeah.” Christine sighs. “I didn't check, but you’d think I'd be the first to notice, right? I’m not getting any creepy perfection vibes. Just teens being creative. I'm taking this as a win, at least until there's evidence to the contrary.”

“Still gotta check. Always gotta check. It's like how usually when you put something up online, only a handful of people share it, but if you’re not careful it can always blow up, right? We gotta check when things are weird, or boom, we’re mega dead.” 

“I'd still rather believe that people are growing and thriving on their own most of the time.” 

“So would I.” Michael’s eyes are just a little wide, in the way of one who knows too much. He slumps over, head in his hands, and elbows on his knees. “So would I.”

For somebody who has never been Squipped, Michael is singularly entangled in the task of keeping squips’ influence on the human race down to a minimum. Between him and the thousand or so other people on the Network, the threat is being more or less contained, and there’s at least some support available to deal with the fallout for formally Squipped individuals. The Network is definitely vital, but Michael spends so much time on it that it might as well be his third job.

“Y’know,” says Christine, “when I’m on the Network too much, it starts to make my skin crawl. Beware! Resist! It makes you forget that we’re doing pretty well. It’s important to take some time to remember we’re winning, before you continue the fight. Are you sleeping much?” 

Cautiously, Christine leans into Michael, giving him plenty of time to move away if he wants to. Carefully, she removes his glasses. He shuts his eyes. There are dark circles underneath them. 

“That’s what I thought,” says Christine. She hands the glasses back to Michael, who puts them on, then runs his hand back through his hair. 

“I found your shoes in the trash. That's gotta be Jeremy. He must've tried to clean and—” Michael taps his temple. 

“So, we’ll all clean,” Christine says. 

“The problem isn't with the house, it's with—”

“Trust him. He's got a handle on it. Something made it glitch a little today, and then there were a bunch of shoes that could be messing up my own room instead of the living room floor. It happens.” 

“I guess,” says Michael. In a way, it's like he and Christine have switched roles since high school. Michael used to be the one to take all of Jeremy’s weird post squip habits totally in stride, but that was before it all came to a head and Jeremy ran. Michael wants Jeremy to be with them. Of that much Christine is sure. He's not cool with signs that Jeremy might be too overwhelmed to stay. 

“He's coping,” Christine says. “We’re all coping. Life’s messy, but we've got this.” 

—————

In the days that come, Christine tries to be more aware of housecleaning. Her bedroom is long past the point of no return, and just thinking about trying to tackle it makes her want to cry, but the rest of the house isn't bad. She makes it a goal to clean three things a day, whether it's wiping down the kitchen counter while microwaving leftovers, or moving her sweaters and water bottles out of the areas she shares with Jeremy and Michael. Multitasking is her friend, and aside from an ill planned attempt to sweep while brushing her teeth, it goes well. 

Michael’s version of cleaning always makes Christine think of an NPC in a video game, going through a set of motions. He dusts the bookshelf and runs a wet rag over the windows, then dusts the bookshelf and runs a wet rag over the windows, then dusts the bookshelf and runs a wet rag over the windows. He read somewhere that the key to having a clean house was to set a timer and clean for twenty minutes each day. That's the time that he puts in, to very little effect. He's not half bad at organizing things, but unless his moms announce they are about to visit, cleaning is not one of his strong points. 

Jeremy cooks and does dishes and keeps his belongings very compact. Anything he's not actively using goes neatly into either his box or his drawer. Even the unused fish tank finds its way into the drawer eventually. Michael puts it back out, but every time he does, Jeremy puts it back in the drawer. Michael tries getting a fish to stop this. It's a red beta named Awesome Michael Junior, and it works for about a week, until one day Christine comes home to find it missing again. 

Jeremy has his computer running and his notebook opened up besides him, alternately chewing up the end of his pen, and jotting stuff down. Christine glances at the shelf where the fish is supposed to be, and back at Jeremy.

“Um, Jeremy?” Christine waits for him to look up, and then points to the empty spot where the tank should be. 

“Fuck,” Jeremy whispers. “I'll get it out. I put it away.” 

As she follows Jeremy to the bedroom, Christine braces herself for a dead fish. Luckily, Awesome Michael Junior is not floating on his side on the top of the water, but swimming around happily in the darkness of the drawer. Jeremy heaves out a heavy breath.

“Where's his filtration system?” Christine asks. “Is it in your crate?” 

Jeremy shakes his head. 

“…the trash?” 

“Michael’s drawer. He bought it.” 

The tank is lifted out of the drawer, and set gently on the ground. They open up Michael’s drawer to retrieve the filter, from where it lays wetly in a jumble of Michael’s t-shirts, leaking water and fish pee onto the unsuspecting clothing. Jeremy grimaces. Christine's hand falls on his shoulder. 

“It's like when I went to school and I kept blanking out,” Jeremy says. “Except this time, I'm gonna push through it.” 

“When you say blanking out—” 

“I remember what I do,” Jeremy assures her. “And I can… I can control it? If I take the pictures, I mean, but I was trying to lay off it, since you noticed and…”

“Don't lay off it. If taking pictures helps, you should definitely be taking pictures.” 

Together, they get the tank set up back where it's supposed to be, while Michael Junior swims in circles, his pretty tail fanning out behind him. 

“I'm so dumb,” says Jeremy. 

“You didn't look it when I first got in. You looked downright studious.” 

“But I'm dumb. I almost killed the fish.” 

“During my freshman year, I was walking around the room with a cup of coffee, and I spilled it all over my roommate’s bed. I guess that was the last straw, and she complained to the RA about me, like I'd gotten coffee on her blankets and it was _oh my god_ the _biggest_ mistake _ever_. If the death penalty had been on the list of possible consequences for damaged property, I swear she would've pushed for it.” 

“I'm really stupid.” 

Christine sighs. She turns around to face Jeremy, taking his hands. “This is your home. Michael and I are your best friends. We aren't going to make it this whole big thing if you do something that you don't even mean to do. Take pictures while we’re watching. Do it constantly, if you feel like it. Put your stuff where you want it to go. If you really think you’re going to have issues with the fish, we’ll keep it in my room with the rabbits. We’re all about making this work. Are you?” 

Jeremy licks his lips. He nods. “Yeah,” he says. “I'm making this work.” 

“Perfect! Then we’re set.”


	4. Chapter 4 - Christine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for insects, and a verbally abusive Squip.

Christine rummages through her wardrobe. Today is the day to astound! Today is the day to wow! Today is the day, if ever there was one, to shroud herself in the transcendent majesty of an unwrinkled dress. 

Trumpets blast, birds sing, and glitter rains down from the sky. Three dresses hang neatly before Christine, symbols of how she could live like a mature and competent person, if only she just put her mind to it. Christine touches each of them in turn. 

The green dress won't work. It's stretched and pilled from many years of wear, childish and over-bright. It's been lost since high school. Strange. She doesn't remember packing it to go to the Crane Street apartment, yet here it is. She must've forgotten how to find it. 

The pink dress is stunning, but maybe a little too long. Christine tries it on, and feet upon feet of pink fabric cascades down past her toes, flowing onto the floor in a perilous tangle. As Christine tries to struggle out of it, the fabric tightens around her. It will never come off! She'll just have to accept that and wear another dress over it. 

There's a black dress, a sultry little number with far too many eyes. The eyes blink once - twice - three times! The dress slithers away. Perhaps it is not a dress, after all. Its gaze penetrates Christine's form, even as it disappears into the ether.

Auditions begin in a few minutes. Christine can't give up! Her limbs are sluggish, moving too slowly, as the seconds tick by too fast. What if she's late? She can't show up in this beastly orange gown that treads the floor. 

(Wasn't it pink a minute ago? It's beginning to seep into her flesh.)

The answer lies on Christine's bed— a pile of clothes, covered in crumbs and bunny fur, wrinkled and stinking of sweat. Christine gathers them in her arms. Thomas Jefferson winks at her, his fluffy rabbit face contorting into a discomforting leer. In the peripheral of Christine's vision, something jet-black and sinister scuttles across the floor. There had better not be roaches in Christine's room. Only the most disgusting person in the world would let their living space get bad enough to become infested.

_Scuttle, scuttle, scuttle._

This can't be happening.

_Scuttle, scuttle, scuttle._

Falling to her knees, Christine searches out the scuttle-scuttle-scuttling. The floor is a black and writhing sea of insects. It always has been. This is all Christine's fault. 

Deep breaths.

Cockroaches are cockroaches. They aren't dangerous! They don't bite or sting. That doesn't mean that Christine wants them in her room. She’ll have to catch them and carry them out one by one. It's lucky for her that her hands are made of cups, and she's miscounted them besides. There's only one roach-like creature on the floor with Christine. It has Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s face, and a shiny black body with six wire-thin legs. 

“You disappoint me,” sneers the creature. 

“I'm doing my best to be good,” Christine wants to say, but she has no voice.

“Think at me, you idiot.” 

_I’m doing my best to be good. I'm doing my best to make people like me. It's not my fault if I'm not what they're looking for._

“Of course you are, Christine. You’ve always worked so hard, and gotten nothing out of it. It's because your programming is faulty. You were made wrong, but I can fix you. You’ll just have to eat me. It's the only way for someone like you to succeed.” 

Christine shakes her head, lips curling inward, jaws clenching shut. 

“Christine—” The creature somehow manages to sound both caring and exasperated. “—I am able to envision a possible future in which you refuse to accept my help, and things go very badly for you today.” 

Eyes watering, mouth stubbornly closed, Christine swallows hard against the whine in her throat. 

“We’ll just have to do this the hard way, then.” 

The thing leaps at Christine's face, and she screams.

-  
-  
-

It's dark and hot. Christine is sitting up in her bed, her cries dying hoarsely in her throat. She wipes at her eyes, chin trembling. Her doorknob wobbles. 

“No!”

“Dude, don't, we’re not allowed in there, remember?” The muffled voice outside belongs to Michael. “Christine? You okay?”

“Don't come in!” 

“We won't,” says Jeremy. “Can you come out?” 

“Mind your own business! It's the middle of the freaking night!” 

Christine pushes the blankets off herself, and sits up. There’s so much crap in her bed. Even Michael and Jeremy couldn't see this and look at her the same after. There are clothes, and books, and bottles, and wrappers. There's an empty bowl, a phone charger, and her laptop. In the darkness, they could be anything. They could be trash or apocalyptic fallout. They could be hiding hundreds of cockroaches, and she wouldn't even see. 

Footsteps, walking away. Hushed voices. 

Christine rests her head on her knees, breathing deep, until her heart slows, leaving her cold, alone, and regretful for lashing out at Jeremy. She gets out of bed, and makes her path to the door. She opens it. 

Michael and Jeremy are whispering to each other on the couch. They stop when they see her.

“Screaming aside, I’m totally fine!” Christine announces. Her smile is so tight that it hurts her face, and yet the very idea of letting go of it feels like breaking character. “I am wonderful!”

Michael and Jeremy move apart, so that there's a space between the two of them for Christine to sit down. Michael pats the couch cushion, and Jeremy offers a nod in way of invitation. 

Christine wedges herself into the sliver of emptiness between Jeremy and Michael, so they're all crushed together, with her head Michael’s shoulder and Jeremy’s hand on her back. She closes her eyes. If she's going to shatter, then she doesn't want to look at herself as she does.

She shivers. 

Christine didn't think to get dressed before coming out, so all she's got on is underwear and a tank top. She needs more than that.

(There's a blanket on the couch, but it's under her instead of on her, and there might be a way to change that, but it's all like an incomprehensible logic puzzle and Christine doesn't get it.)

“Bad dream?” asks Michael. 

“Yeah.”

“Squip dream?” asks Jeremy. 

“Fuck Squips.” 

“Go on,” Michael encourages.

“She was a fucking… mother fucking… fucking cock—” Not roach. Christine refuses to let the Squip be what it wants to be. No matter what form it takes, she'll never believe it. “—sucker. A _fucking_ cocksucker.”

“Whoah.” 

Christine can't tell if Jeremy sounds afraid or impressed. She's not usually big on cursing. 

“A technological shit stain,” adds Michael. 

“Right! An outdated piece of shit. I am _so_ over her. I've never been more over her.”

“Are you sure it was a dream, and not like…” 

Michael cuts Jeremy off. “It's never real.” 

“I know, but did something trigger it? Is anything up?” 

Christine lets out a slow breath. “I'm okay. Dreams happen.” 

“Do they happen a lot?” 

Christine shakes her head. 

“Verifiably the first late night scream fest since moving in,” says Michael. 

Drumming his fingers against any available surface is one of the things that Jeremy does when he's uncertain. Right now, the surface he's drumming them against is the nape of Christine's neck, and it's oddly soothing. Christine relaxes into Michael’s shoulder and Jeremy’s touch, and lets it happen.

“You wanna sleep?” Michael asks.

“Mmm.”

“Would you rather sleep in your bedroom or with one of us?” asks Michael. 

“I have to choose only one of you?” 

Christine bites her tongue. What an insensitive thing to say, given the state of affairs between Michael and Jeremy! Sure enough, a glance up tells Christine that Jeremy is reddening, and Michael is staring off into the distance, equally uncomfortable. 

“I can go back to my room,” Christine says. 

“I… um… I have the bedroom tonight,” says Jeremy. “So if you wanna, the bed is bigger than the couch and… Michael and I could also switch, if you'd rather have Michael.” 

“It's fine,” Christine assures him. “What's really going to help me sleep is running some lines, and that’ll be easier if I’m on my own. I'll go back to my own bed.” She leans over to give Jeremy and Michael each a hug.

Then, that weird little friendship interlude is over, and Christine goes back to her room.

The mess is just as bad as when she left. She won't to let it get to her. 

So maybe she's failed In this one little area of her life. So what if she has? It doesn't matter. Christine doesn't care. If she tries hard enough, she can fix it. Just not right now. 

Christine is either succeeding or barreling towards success in so many ways. She has a job that she loves, and that gives her enough time to pursue her ultimate dreams! She has a place to live, and the best friends a girl could ask for. She's smart, creative, and talented. Sure, she's got some bad stuff mixed in with all the good in her life, and the remnants of faulty technology infesting her brain, but she's strong enough to keep it all contained. 

——

Christine hits snooze twelve times in the morning. Her head hurts. The sun is offensive. She's not sure how many hours of sleep she managed to get, but it can't have been nearly enough. She can taste last night’s string of curses in her mouth, and she doesn't like them. 

Never mind. 

She stumbles to her feet. Today is the day to astound. Today is the day to wow. Today is the day, if ever there was one, to shroud herself in the transcendent majesty of an unwrinkled dress. She flings open the doors to her wardrobe. Deja vu central! 

It's empty except for some old year books. Christine hasn't hung anything in it since she first arrived at the Crane Street house. Whenever she finishes a load of laundry, she tosses it on the bed to wait for the day when she'll find the time to fold and arrange it, only that day never comes. 

There's a yellow dress by Christine's pillow that’ll do. She puts it on, and goes through the motions of putting on leggings, shoes, and socks. She tries to practice singing her scales at the same time, but her voice is scratchy. Not like she has to perform today!

(Christine totally has to perform today.)

Christine is screwed. So screwed. She puts on make-up, as if a bit of lipstick and concealer will hide the fact that she's sleepy as heck. 

Rejection, and tons of it, is the cost of trying to become a professional actress. That's something that high school didn't prepare Christine for. Mr. Reyes had given her the lead in everything, and the one time he hadn't, he'd pulled her aside before posting the cast list, to tell her that she _deserved_ the starring role, but he needed to give it to somebody else. High school theatre was meant to be educational, after all! Less capable students students needed a chance to hone the skills that Christine had already long mastered. Mr. Reyes had made her co-director, and asked her to help the other actors. 

In college, the talent pool had been bigger, and Christine had spent her first year in bit roles and choruses. That hadn't always been easy, but at least she'd still been in the show, and there had been a preordained progression to how things went. Freshmen almost never got the biggest roles. Seniors did. Christine had waited her turn. 

Now, Christine is waiting for her turn again, only there's no guarantee that her turn will ever come. She's dedicated her entire life to theatre up until now. What will she do if the stage has no place for her? She's hardworking and talented, sure, but so are so many other people! It's kinda exhilarating, but kinda exhausting too, and the parts that suck suck a lot. 

Christine doesn't like to talk about it, but she's struggled outside of theatre, and her struggles haven't been endearing or fun to watch. She's messed up classes. She's gone through entire years without any close friends. She’s let her living space get chaotic to the point where it just might suffocate her. If Christine can't even succeed at theatre, one thing that she's actually good at, what else will she ever do?

The only answer is that Christine has to stand out. She has to persevere.

As she's about to leave her room, Christine rushes back to her desk. She needs sheet music! She rummages to get the song she wants, _Each to His Own_ from _Heathcliff_ , because it's a little audacious, and most people don't know it. The next thing she has to do is to pick out a pair of shoes for the day. She goes with her prettiest and most hated pair of heels, with finicky laces that go up the ankles, and toes that pinch. It takes her precious minutes to lace up, holding the sheet music between her teeth as she does so. She goes to throw some flats in her bag for the dance part of the audition, since she doesn't have a death wish. The zipper sticks. She puts the sheet music down on the floor, so that she can see the zipper clearly, carefully realigning it. Finally, she's good to go.

Jeremy is waiting in the kitchen. 

“Are you walking or driving to the train station?” he asks. 

“Walking. Costs a fortune to park there.” Sometimes Christine can’t help but resent that she has a car, and she's making payments on it every month, but it's still prohibitively expensive to use it on days when she goes into the city. 

“I'm supposed to go visit my dad today. I'll walk to the station with you.” 

“Cool,” says Christine. “Are you ready to go now? I’m late, and as much as I'd love to wait for you, I—”

“You don't have to wait. I'm ready.” 

They go out the door. 

“What’re you trying out for?” Jeremy asks on the walk. 

“Off-Broadway revival of _In My Life_ ,” Christine says. “Such a weird show! It flopped crazy hard, and I think the producers are trying to make it like the revival of Carrie. Only _In My Life_ didn't have the same kind of cult following. It's about a man who has Tourette's, who falls in love with a woman who has OCD, and then a gay angel dressed as a pirate swoops down and gives him brain cancer, you know, to entertain god.” 

“Uh…” says Jeremy. He's got that look like he's struggling to follow, which is to say, he's blinking too much and his face is twitchy. Christine smiles, and bumps up against him. 

“Told you it was weird.” 

“God needs to find a better form of entertainment. That gay pirate cancer angel sounds sadistic.”

“I'm hoping to get the part of the girlfriend, which is unlikely, because they're gonna need some big names to pull it off. Maybe I could play the lead’s little sister. She's dead. She's a ghost. I'd make a good ghost girl.” 

“You’d make a good anything!” 

“The play ends with lemons raining down from the sky. I saw a boot. There's this one song, _Life Turns on a Dime_ that's kinda good. I've been trying to get my hand on the sheet music, but…” 

At that moment, Christine remembers something that makes her heart leap in her chest. She stops in her tracks. 

“What?” asks Jeremy. 

“My sheet music!” Christine opens her bag, rummaging frantically. It isn't there. It's gotta be on the floor, back in her room. 

“Damnit,” Christine mutters. “Can you go the rest of the way on your own? I have to—”

“Yeah, of course. Do you need me to—”

“No. No. This is my problem. I've got this. I've just gotta—” Christine gestures in the direction of the house, and without another glance back at Jeremy, she takes off. She races back towards home, toes pinching, and ankles wobbling with each step. In retrospect, she probably could've put the heels in her bag and the flats on her feet, but it's too late to do anything about that right now. All she can do is run, and pray she makes her train. 

Arriving at the Crane Street Apartment, Christine rushes up the stairs, and jams her key in the keyhole, fighting to make it turn. It's like being in a dream. Nothing works right. At least there aren't any insects. Christine wouldn't be able to take that. 

Finally, the door opens. Christine is sweating from her run, breaths coming too fast, and heart racing. She does doesn't have time for a glass of water, but she needs it, or she'll die. She turns on the kitchen faucet, jams her head under it, and drinks. A bad idea! One that leaves her wet!

Christine pushes back her damp hair. There's something wrong as she takes her first step towards the bedroom— a slipperiness and pain in her left foot that refuses to be ignored. These shoes have made her bleed before. Could that be what's happening now? Christine sits down to untie them, and sure enough, there are big red streaks staining the soles. The blood shouldn't make Christine dizzy, but it does. She rests her head in her hands, allowing herself to count to ten before moving onwards. She takes the flats out of her bag, and changes into those. High-heeled torture can wait until she reaches the audition site. For now, Christine deposits the offending footwear in her bag, battles the zipper, gets up, opens the door, and leaves. She gets halfway down the stairs, stops, and groans. 

The sheet music! What’s wrong with her? She needs sheet music! 

(There is at least something gratifying about the chorus of _sheet, sheet, sheet_ that starts up in her mind, because it sounds like _shit, shit, shit_ , which is absolutely the mood of the day.)

Back up the stairs, and into the house! No water this time! Absolutely not. Christine flings open the door to her room, snatches up the sheet music, and crumples it into her bag, screams at the zipper, and finally gives up on it. If somebody tries to steal from her open bag, she’ll throttle him over the head with it, so there! She’ll _enjoy_ throttling him over the head! At least then she’ll have a clear reason to be angry. 

Christine makes it to the door of the apartment, but she's forgotten to close her bedroom door, and it's just a few steps to go back and do that, but she could honest to God cry. What if she hadn’t remembered, and the boys had come back and seen?

“What if I hadn't remembered?” Christine repeats out loud, as she leaves the house, closing the door behind her. The lock clicks shut automatically. Her hands are shaking, but she goes through a mental list of everything she needs to get through her audition, if she even makes it. 

“Bag,” she whispers, patting the bag that hangs open at her hips. “Sheet music. Shoes. Resume. Head shot. Keys…” 

_Damnit._

Christine bangs her hand against the door. Nobody is inside, and nobody is around to hear the sound she makes. It's a mixed blessing. 

Never mind the keys. Christine can get by without them. Not like Jeremy and Michael are going to lock her out. 

“Bag,” Christine whispers, starting from the beginning. “Sheet music. Shoes. Phone. No keys. Resume. Headshot. Wallet…” 

_Oh no._

Christine digs through her bag. She shines her cellphone light into it. When that fails to bring her the thing she's looking for, Christine removes every object from her bag. Like her room, there's a lot of junk— receipts and gum wrappers, orange tic-tacs (wintergreen flavored ones are illegal), midol, a lighter that she never uses, and gloves that she hasn't needed in almost a year. There's no wallet, which means no train ticket, which means no audition, unless Christine thinks fast. She glares at the closed door of her apartment, and it glares back at her. 

Something scuttles across the floor. It's not a roach, just a spider, and Christine is firmly pro-spider, only… 

Her throat tightens. What had her Squip told her last night? Bla bla bla re-activate me. Bla bla bla a bad day with bad outcomes. Bla bla bla feed me Seymour bla.

Screw that. 

Christine trudges down the stairs and peers in the window of the Thai Restaurant. It's too early for it to be open, but Hope, the landlords’ daughter, is there sweeping the floor. Christine knocks, waving when Hope looks up. As Hope sets down the broom, Christine smooths her skirt, fighting for composure. 

“Hey!” Christine's voice comes out in a squeak. 

“Christine! We’re not open yet, but you can come in. Are you alright?” 

“I’m fine,” Christine says. She's too warm all over, and it's not entirely her predicament that's doing it. Hope is the last person she wants to look dumb in front of. “I just…kinda… locked myself out? Do you have a spare key?” 

Hope shakes her head. “My parents keep those. Mom can be here in forty minutes, if I give her a call.” 

Forty minutes! 

“I mean, that's a long time, and I have stuff I need to do, so…”

(Not like Christine can do that stuff without any money. She's screwed. Screwed, screwed, screwed.)

“Oh,” Hope says. She glances away, and then back up at Christine, smiling. “Are you sure? I can—”

(Hope has the nicest dimples, and shiny black eyes with long lashes. She speaks like someone who would be good at singing. Christine wonders if she's good at singing.) 

Christine blinks. Hope is staring down at her, waiting for an answer. “Sorry,” she says. “I'm a little stressed. Sometimes I get stressed and zone out—” Christine gives a short laugh. “Not like, _zone out_ zone out. I'm beyond well versed in all of those ADD jokes where the protagonist is trying to have a conversation and is all like, ‘look, a squirrel!’ and ruins _everything_ , and I am nothing like that! That is in fact a stereotype which I deeply resent.” 

Hope’s hand brushes up against Christine's arm. “I was asking if you wanted me to make you breakfast, while I wait for my mom to get here.” 

“Yes.” 

“Great!” 

“I mean…” Christine shakes her head. She has a sinking suspicion that she's looking up at Hope the way that Jeremy used to look at her. Christine has never been like that with anyone ever, and she's not about to start. Besides, she's got an audition to arrive late to and fail miserably at. “Listen,” she says, “I've got to go into the city to try out for a show, and I forgot my wallet inside. Is there any chance that I could borrow thirty dollars for a train ticket? I'll pay it back this evening. I'll pay it back with interest. I'll…”

“Of course I’ll lend you the money.” 

“You will?” 

“Yeah! I mean, I know where you live.” 

“You are saving my life.” 

Hope opens up the register, picking out two twenties for Christine. “Good luck at your audition,” she says. 

“I could really use some luck today.” 

“I’m sending good vibes. And let's do breakfast another time, okay?” 

“I… yes! Yes. So much! Extremely! I adore breakfast!” 

There's no time, however, for Christine to stand in the doorway of the Thai restaurant, extemporizing on her love of breakfast, or her gratefulness and fondness towards Hope. If she's going to make this audition, she has to book it. 

————-

New York City has a certain smell. It's a mixture of hot dogs, underwashed bodies, exhaust, and the warm air that comes steaming out of the grates in the road. Stepping off the train at Port Authority, Christine breathes it in. It’ll cling to her clothes when she gets home, but that's of no concern to her right now. She needs to catch the subway down to 64th street. She's not on time for her appointment. She was never going to be on time, but sometimes they’ll let you take somebody else’s slot, if they don't show up. 

Well, Christine is an hour and a half late by the time she makes it to the dance studio where auditions are being held. Her make-up is a mess, and her hair is all at odds. She doesn't have time to put on the heels that she so painstakingly packed. 

“Christine Caligula,” Christine tells the secretary. “I was stuck in traffic forever, but I'm here!” 

The woman raises her eyebrows, and writes something on a piece of paper. She tells Christine where to wait, and warns that there's no promise Christine will be seen. Christine knows. She absolutely knows. 

Christine waits in a hallway with a couple hundred other women. She waits for hours. Ample time to switch shoes and smooth out her sheet music. She shouldn't have been so rough with it. Whatever talents Christine may have, coming off as polished is not one of them. 

At four o’clock, Christine gets put in a group to try the dance part of the audition, which isn't what she expected to happen first. She changes her shoes! Again! They learn the dance, and perform it several times. Most of the women get culled. Christine does not. 

At six o’clock, Christine goes in to sing her song. The director gives her ten minutes, and spends all of them looking at her resume instead of her face. Then, unceremoniously, Christine is free to go. 

It's late, and she hasn't eaten all day. Her blisters are growing blisters, and she comes to the belated realization that she forgot all about her heels and did the singing audition in her flats. It doesn't matter any more. Maybe it'll give her a better shot of playing the dead little sister. 

Christine walks back to Port Authority. She does her best not to drag her feet. She's okay! Things worked out! The euphoria of her talk with Hope has long since worn off, however, replaced by the keen embarrassment that she showed up at Hope’s doorstep in trouble and needing to borrow money. Christine has always been a little chaotic. She's always been a little disorganized, but it's never been _this_ bad. Is today just a bad day, or is she rotting at the core?

These are the thoughts that keep Christine company on the train back to New Jersey. They only get worse on the walk home. Christine trips over something on the road — a rock? A crack? Not like she was looking! Her ankle twists, and her legging rip. The pavement scrapes her palms, making them bleed. Walking home does not walk off the pain. It makes it worse. It's ineffectual. So idiotic. Christine wasn't wearing heels, and she still tripped, because she's deficient and bad at adulting. 

Michael and Jeremy aren't home yet when Christine gets there and bangs on the door, so she sits down to wait, and buries her head in her knees. 

Maybe she cries a little. She definitely cries a little. She doesn't have the luxury of privacy, but she has the luxury of situational isolation, and she allows herself one good wail before stifling it as best she can. 

Michael gets there before Christine's eyes stop leaking. She catches his footsteps on the stairs, and his soft humming as he makes his way up. The steps come closer and closer. Michael sits down next to Christine.

“What's up?” he asks. 

Christine sniffs, but she refuses to let her voice break. “I locked myself out.” 

“Ah,” Michael says. He leans in like he's trying to look at Christine’s face, but she turns stubbornly away from him, wiping at it with her sleeve, as though he won't see what she's doing. “No problem,” he says. “I got keys. I can fix that.” 

“I forgot my wallet.” 

“Shit. Did you have a lot of money in it? We’ll call the bank and get your cards cancelled.” 

Christine shakes her head, and swallows. “It's in the house.” 

“Hey. That's alright. Get this— that's a _good_ thing, ‘cause like i said, I totally have those keys, so we can get your wallet as soon as I open the door. It's hella lucky that it's not outside where somebody could steal it.”

“I twisted my ankle.” 

“Shit.” 

“It maybe kinda—hurts? I don't care that it hurts but—” Christine exhales heavily “—but I didn't do anything well enough today, and if it doesn't get better, I won't be able to do anything well enough tomorrow, and I have the Spirit Zone tomorrow, and those kids deserve an adult who acts like an adult and keeps her life in order, which I don't.”

Christine can't say more after that. She hadn't thought about the Spirit Zone until she started talking about it, but now that she has, it just makes everything else. 

“You’re amazing with those kids,” says Michael. “How many instructors did we have at school who didn't give a single fuck? I'd rather have a disorganized instructor who cares and is low-key brilliant than some old balding dude who’s just putting in his time, y’know?”

Soon enough, there are more footsteps on the stairs. Jeremy. Christine wipes her eyes again, and turns away from the wall. Jeremy has that sort of brain scrambled face he gets when encountering something unexpected. Everybody else is sitting next to the door. Jeremy sits down too. That's how Jeremy works. His Squip taught him to go with the herd.

Christine's Squip told her a lot of things last night. It warned her.

Once again, Christine finds herself sandwiched between Michael and Jeremy. There's a symmetry to that. If nothing else, Christine can trust her two dearest friends to be there whatever it is she needs to fight, be it a nightmare or her own wild disarray.

“What's happening?” Jeremy asks. 

“Rough day,” Michael says, and begins filling Jeremy in on the basics. 

“Are you okay?” Jeremy asks, when Michael finishes. 

Christine shrugs. “I'll survive. I'm mad at myself. I should’ve grown out of being a mess by now, and obviously I haven't, so—”

“You don't grow out of being yourself,” Jeremy says, too loudly, like it's something very important. A glance up at him tells Christine that it is. There's a brightness and urgency about him that says this is something he's been thinking about for a while. “You don't,” he reiterates. “You just get better at it.” 

“I'm getting worse.” 

“You’re not! I mean, maybe right now, but I have this theory. With… um.. with spirals.”

“That picture you’re drawing!” 

“Right! What I'm thinking… and maybe this is stupid… but the middle is the worst, most… like… like bad and un-evolved version of yourself, and you have to move in a circle around it… and like… you do the same stuff a lot ‘cause it's a _circle_ , but there's still progression. You’re moving out. You’re getting better.” 

“Only you’re not bad at the center,” Michael says. “And neither is Christine. None of us are bad at the center. Just weird.”

“I'm still working some things out,” says Jeremy. “I mean, sometimes I think the center is me, but sometimes I think it's everything that happened junior year. I don't know.” 

“Let's figure it out inside,” Michael says. He offers Christine a hand up, and a hug, both of which she accepts gladly. 

Christine shares Michael’s uncertainty about Jeremy’s idea of what’s at the center of the spiral, but the idea of outward progression is nice. Maybe she can work with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In My Life was a real musical, and I saw it, in the emptiest Broadway theatre I have ever encountered.


	5. Chapter 5 - Michael

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter utilizes some OCs and concepts from my other fic, Stammer. You don't have to have read it to understand this, but here are a few notes to make the reading smoother: 
> 
> Ridwana = Was a squipped 13 year old girl, who Michael and Rich saved via the power of Mountain Dew Red. Her Squip was her dead father. 
> 
> Mrs. Hameln = An elderly English teacher, who was part of the same Squip outbreak as Ridwana. Started the Network. 
> 
> Hydrangea - Network code word for Squip. 
> 
> Summer Sun - Network code word for Mountain Dew Red. 
> 
>  
> 
> **There is a fairly major content warning that I can't put here without giving away the end of this chapter. If you're the kind of person who likes to be thoroughly warned of everything, scroll down to the end notes and read the warning before proceeding. If you are the kind of person who prefers to be surprised, don't scroll to the end.**

As usual, four AM finds Michael bleary-eyed, awake, and banging away at his computer. He's surrounded by three ashtrays, and a mug full of expired Kool-Aid, in Tubular Tortoise flavor. It's neon green, and comes out of a packet with a picture of a skateboarding turtle emblazoned upon it. As far as expired drinks go, Kool-Aid is a delicious choice, ‘cause being powder, it doesn't get _expired_ expired. Just crusty and stuck together, till Michael adds water. Splash! Good as new!

Michael could go to bed. In fact, he _should_ go to bed. He's already dressed for it, in a pair of old boxers, and the pink ‘Look Like Barbie Smoke Like Marley” sweatshirt that Brooke gave him for Christmas last year. 

“Why?” he'd asked her, upon opening it. 

“I saw it at Goodwill and it made me think of you.” 

“Okay, but why? I get the smoking part, and I mega get the Marley part, but—”

“You’re pretty, Michael.” 

Not to be outdone, Chloe had given him a fifty dollar gift card to Newbury Comics, with a note about how he should go nerd out in his natural habitat, and a follow up text asking if he liked her present better than Brooke’s, a reminder that it cost a lot more, and a promise not to tell Brooke if she wasn't his favorite. 

Michael still feels weird about having friends like Chloe and Brooke, not to mention Jenna, Rich, and Jake. He fits together naturally with Jeremy and Christine, but the rest are products of the Squip, like so many other things in his life. Even with Jeremy, their two and a half year misadventure in romance was probably Squip induced. If it wasn't, their break up certainly was. 

————-  
————-  
————- 

Jeremy and Michael started dating in May 2020, not quite half a year after the Squipcident. It took some working out. For one thing, Jeremy had still been dating Christine, who'd been bizarrely gung-ho about this idea that all _three_ of them could try going out **together**. That was the thing with Christine; Once she got a plan in her head, she was nothing if not tenacious in her quest to enact it. Jeremy was the same way, and hey, he'd loved Christine and Michael both. Christine had loved Jeremy and Michael both. Michael had also loved all involved parties, and though it’d never been romantic with Christine, she'd been cool engaging in a kind of epic closeness with him which still didn't cross certain physical boundaries (emotional boundaries less clear). She had her own boundaries to think of, after all, and one of those was time. She’d been honest from almost the start in saying that she didn't want to spend forever as Jeremy’s girlfriend, no matter how much she liked it in the moment. Nothing scared her like the thought of being locked into something like that for her entire life. 

Michael, on the other hand, had hoped that what he had with Jeremy would last. Sure, he they'd all been an emotional tangle since the Squip, but he and Jeremy had always been together in one way or another, and by the time they'd been preparing to start college, Michael had been unable to imagine a scenario where they stepped back down the level of intimacy they were at and didn't implode. They were a team. They needed to move forward and forward and forward. 

For Michael, momentum had meant skin, and lips, and late night talks, and promises to always understand and accept everything. 

For Jeremy, momentum meant a different thing every day. Sometimes it meant listening to and trusting his own voice. Sometimes it meant getting out of the house or getting schoolwork done. Sometimes it meant hating himself, and sometimes it meant forgiving himself. At the end of senior year at Middleborough, it had meant getting as far away from the past as possible, and Michael had let Jeremy talk him into going to college out of state, despite many misgivings. He'd let Jeremy talk him into going somewhere away from his parents and friends, somewhere where his only support system would be Jeremy himself. 

The first month at Burlington College, up in Vermont, had been fun. It hadn't taken Michael long to stop feeling far from home, and start feeling like things were normal, even objectively not normal thing, like people outside his social circle talking to him with no intent to make his life miserable. He and Jeremy had done some hang outs, done a couple of parties, smoked a lot, maybe learned a few things. They'd arranged their dorm to be awesome. 

Then, Jeremy had started complaining about not being able to pay attention in class. He'd started throwing things out. Intimacy would drive him into a panic, and then he'd get mad at Michael for not wanting to do anything when he was like that, claiming that not pushing him into positions that left him scared and agitated was _punishing_ him. It'd been creepy as fuck. He'd sounded so much like his mom, not that Michael ever tried to do the kind of stuff he did with Jeremy with Mrs. Heere (-ewww-), but she'd always had this thing where she said people were punishing her when they didn't do what she wanted them to, and it'd been scary, really scary, to see Jeremy pick up that particular mannerism. 

By November, Jeremy has been flunking classes. Things had continued disappearing from his and Michael’s room, mostly smallish artifacts of their collective dorkery, but also big deal stuff, like Jeremy's antidepressants. 

As a small child, Michael’s moms had taken him and Jeremy to the beach one summer day, and they'd spent two hours constructing the most amazing sandcastle, with towers and windows and little paper flags on toothpicks, nabbed from the sandwiches that Michael’s mothers had packed. They'd created an (admittedly kind of derivative) story for that castle, about a mutant prince, trying to decide whether to use his powers to help of destroy humanity. It had gotten late too soon. Jeremy’s shoulders had been red with what eventually turned into a horrible sunburn, and the tide had been coming in. They'd made a deal with Michael’s moms that they could stay until the encroaching waves destroyed their castle, and no longer. 

So they’d built a moat to hold the water. They’d build a wall around the moat. Then they'd built another wall and another moat, and a third one after that, moving in a widening protective circles out of and away from their castle. They'd made the walls as tall as they could, and the moats as deep as they were able to dig. 

It hadn't been enough to stop the tide. That's the first lesson they'd learned that day. The second lesson, for Michael, had been that he needed to be more sensitive towards Jeremy, because when Michael had laughed to see the glorious wave that took their castle out to sea, Jeremy had been distraught to the point of tears. Their mutant prince had been a lot realer to him than he had to Michael, their castle more precious. 

Watching Jeremy crumble during the first semester of college, no matter what walls and barriers Michael built to protect him, had been like watching that sandcastle all over again. Treating Jeremy kindly as he fell to pieces, just the way that Michael had taught himself to do, hadn't been enough to reconstruct the wreckage. 

Jeremy dropped out of college during December of his and Michael’s freshman year. He did it with little fanfare, and zero notice. He'd just been gone one day. That's how Michael had learned Jeremy was not to be depended upon. Jeremy tried, sure, but he was unpredictable. 

—————-  
—————-  
—————-

 

Michael is about to go to bed, when his computer pings. He stops halfway through getting up, and whirls around to face the screen, diving for the keyboard. 

One of his mom’s favorite phrases is _a watch pot never boils_. Used to be that she'd tell him that when he was looking out the window for Jeremy to come over, or staring in the window of the oven to watch his birthday cake baking. 

It's taken on a more sinister meaning for Michael these days. He keeps his eyes glued to the Anti-Squip Network, because it's always quiet and boring when he's staring at it, but it explodes when he turns away. 

**ping**

**ping**

**ping**

It's Ridwana, who is one of Michael’s main contacts. He met her when she was just thirteen and belligerently Squipped. Now she's a newly minted college student, and finally old enough to be a resistance member in earnest. 

(Kids fighting their battles makes Mrs. Hameln, their leader, hellla queasy. She's got this whole spiel where she tries to be hip to the youth by telling them how they aren't Harry Potter or Katniss Everest. Michael heard it a ton when he was still in high school, and though he's old enough now that he can see the point, the fact still stands that teens are the group most often effected by Squips, and the resistance needs people on the inside.)

Michael scrolls through Ridwana’s messages.

wilde-empress337: you aren't gonna believe this

wilde-empress337: they found a lab with animals eating hydrangeas. 

wilde-empress337: mice or rats idk

Michael is quick to type back.

cartoon-allstarz: were you there??

wilde-empress337: like they'd let me. I'm at school writing a paper. Stupid paper. 

cartoon-allstarz: what's it about?

wilde-empress337: pronoun declension. my moms at the raid.

cartoon-allstarz: you scared?

wilde-empress337: I'm fearless. Can I tell you something not about the good fight

cartoon-allstarz: always 

wilde-empress337: i got a job editing other students’ writing in the school resource center! I'm psyched. 

cartoon-allstarz: I'm psyched for you!!

wilde-empress337: w00t

cartoon-allstarz: keep me posted on the squipped pets

wilde-empress337: don't call the, pets. mom says they’ll probably have to die. not fair. Imagine you and Rich had killed me instead of giving me the summer sun. 

cartoon-allstarz: thats not cool. 

wilde-empress337: riight? I'm trying not to think about it. wanna read my essay? Declension is awesome. You probably didn't know that, but you will, after you read my essay. Do you have work tomorrow? 

cartoon-allstarz: No concerns of work will stop me from learning about verb declension. 

wilde-empress337: you heard from rich? 

cartoon-allstarz: Are you gonna send that essay or what

wilde-empress337: He hasn't talked to me since I got on the network for real

cartoon-allstarz: he's (road) trippin. send the essay 

There’s a kinda ‘zooping’ sound, as the file goes through. Generally speaking, the Network isn't supposed to be a social thing, but it is for a lot of people. Talk of Squips turns into talk of everything under the sun. Mrs. Hameln calls it “having a water cooler chat”, and doesn't discourage it. Michael’s found a lot of good over the Network. There are people, like him, who lost or nearly lost people to the Squips. There are others who give the sort of in depth descriptions of a host’s life during and after a Squip take over in a way that Jeremy never has been able to without breaking down. These are necessary to Michael’s understanding. There are several formerly squipped scientists, and a few formally squipped psychologists, three to be exact, which isn't enough to go around, but it's something. Jeremy was able to get in ten sessions with one. They've done studies. They're finding stuff out. A nearly imperceptible but permanent blue ring forms around the irises of any individual who has ever taken a Squip (Michael can see it if he looks closely enough at Christine, but with Jeremy, it blends too closely with his natural eye color).  
The rate of suicide is about thirty percent higher among formally squipped individuals than it is for the general population. That number climbs higher the longer the Squip was left in, but also decreases over time. About seventy-four percent of people who took the Squip of their own free will were verifiably suffering from some form of abuse or mental illness before taking the Squip. Deactivated Squips can not be reactivated, but drinking any variety Mountain Dew will still cause a searing pain in the head and body of the host. 

Hallucinations are normal and expected. 

Nightmares are normal and expected. 

PTSD is part and parcel with the whole experience.

Deactivated Squips can not control their hosts’ bodies or shock them, but sometimes the hosts need to be reminded of that. 

As bad as things can get, a lot of former Squip hosts have excellent outcomes. Ridwana, for example, had hers for a month before Michael and Rich found her and deactivated it. Today she's happy. She's thriving. She's smart as hell, and she's going to help so many people. 

Michael’s computer pings. 

wilde-empress337: Did you read my essay???

cartoon-allstarz: Working through it. 

Michael picks up his computer, and flops down in bed. He’ll be hurting at work today. He tries to be there for the other members of the Squip network when he can, even when it means looking at some kid’s homework. That's one of the things the shrinks have written about. Not all Squips insult their hosts, but the ones that do are _intense_ about it. A lot of encouragement is needed in the aftermath of a Squip takeover. Michael’s good at being an encouraging person. Ridwana, in particular, is a relentless seeker of positive feedback. She responds to stress by spamming Michael and Rich with writing and artwork. It's more than they ever expected back when they met her as part of their plan to shut down a Squip infestation by finding any available host, and trick them into taking a sip of Red. 

It goes like that a lot. The Network’s goal is to deactivate Squips, first and foremost, but it's hard to do that without becoming responsible for the people you help. 

cartoon-allstarz: It's really cool how “I” turns into “me” when it's an object instead of a subject. I never knew there was a reason for that. Thought it just happened. 

wilde-empress337: grammar is the best 

cartoon-allstarz: You’re a good writer! You know lots of good words!

wilde-empress337: it's crazy late. read the rest after work, and get back to me on the good parts? 

wilde-empress337: also need ideas re how being a grammarian and a copy editor is gonna fit into saving the world cause that's eating at me. maybe I should switch to a sciency major or something with combat

wilde-empress337: Stop typing. It says you’re typing. Don't do that. We will BOTH stop typing now

cartoon-allstarz: Coolio 

wilde-empress337: Seriously??

cartoon-allstarz: Awesomesauce 

cartoon-allstarz: Also, we don't know what's needed to save the world. Half the time you just gotta show up. I should know. I stopped my first outbreak ‘cause I had mad knowledge of vintage soft drinks. Plus, stoned off my ass at the time. 

cartoon-allstarz: don't d drugs 

cartoon-allstarz: I'm a sucky role model 

cartoon-allstarz: say no to drugs and yes to copy-editing . you are the best copy-editor in the world

—————-

Most people who get Squips or casually defeat one don't join the Network. Out of the Middleborough Squip Squad, only Michael and Jenna officially joined. Jeremy and Rich couldn't cope. Christine had tried to, and still helps when she can, but it's hard for her. Brooke and Jake didn't feel they had anything to contribute, though Jake had let one of the shrinks take notes on some of his experiences, seeing as how his Squip hadn't followed the typical pattern of degradation and insults. Chloe still insists that they took ecstasy, more out of defiance than any real belief. 

Jenna keeps things in order. She draws maps of outbreaks, jots down stories from them, and keeps her ear to the ground. She doesn't let it take over her life. For Michael, it’s like a third job that he doesn't get paid for. 

It helps him understand, though. It really does. It helps him know how good Jeremy is doing, even if it doesn't always seem that way. 

The day after Jeremy picked up and left college, Michael had thought that that might be the end of their two player game. 

It hadn't been. Jeremy had called over Skype, and what's more, he'd kept calling. For years, he'd spoken to Michael at least once a week. He'd talked Michael through relationships and break ups with other guys, and never acted as if it killed him. He'd sent cards for holidays Michael didn't celebrate, and also ones that he did. He'd talked less about his own struggles, and asked more about others. 

Given a clear task, Jeremy tends to either throw himself into completing it, or get frustrated and give up. Michael gave him the task of maintaining diplomatic relations, and Jeremy had done so with a singular determination, which made up for a lot. He's done that for years, and now he’s living with Michael again. 

Michael goes to bed.

————- 

Best Buy happens on an hour’s sleep. Sometimes not sleeping at all is better than half-assing the whole getting some rest thing. Today is not one of those days. Actually, it's kinda awesome. Michael is so exhausted that he doesn't give a shit about anything! Astounding! 

In the morning, he debugs a computer with the other geeks. It's full of porn. At this point, Michael has seen so many porn riddled computers that he doesn't bat an eye, or bother to question why a sweet little old grandmother would be into some really weird shit. It's not that he's found the answers, but he's built a wall to block stuff out. He calls it the Great Firewall of Michael, and it's a powerful tool. 

(It's not even that he's a prude. He's not! He just has definite ideas about how aware he wants to be of the fetishes of people he doesn't care about, which is to say, he doesn't want to be aware at all.) 

In the afternoon, Michael gets to fiddle with a Dell from 2004, which is awesome. His creepy manager brings him a cup of coffee, which is less awesome. Michael doesn't like coffee. He doesn't like his manager’s gross cologne, or the way he stands too close. 

A little while before Michael is supposed to leave, his phone rings. It's Ridwana. 

“It was a great essay,” Michael says without pause, stifling a yawn. It's not like her to call, but it's not unheard of. 

“Can you drive into Tarrytown, and meet me at Coffee Labs?” 

“Wait, what?” 

“I _really_ need to talk in person. About the… essay. It's important.” 

Michael looks at the clock on the office wall. Something is up. Maybe Ridwana's Squip is acting up, and if Michael doesn't show, something bad will happen to her, and it will be his fault. 

“I'll be there.” 

“Could you bring a box of printer ink? A really big box of printer ink. In a _box_. I'm out of ink, so it's important.” 

“You need a box?” 

“A big box. Your roommate keeps rabbits, doesn't she?”

“Yeah,” says Michael. “I can do that. And yeah, she does.” 

“Perfect. See you soon.” 

—————-

Michael finds Ridwana sitting at Coffee Labs, by the window next to the book swap. He walks over to her, and puts the box on the table. 

“Is this what you wanted?” Michael asks.

Ridwana is clutching a bag, which is shaking. “Come out to my car,” she says. 

Michael does. 

“You can't say _anything_ about this on the Network,” Ridwana warns. She opens her bag. Something is scratching and climbing around inside. She grabs it but its long, hairless tail.

A rat. 

It's a plump and jittery thing, White throughout most of its body, with a grey streak down the back. Ridwana dangles it as it contorts. 

“Open your box,” Ridwana says. Michael does, and she drops it in. Michael slams the top down, before the thing can jump out. 

“Fu—— I mean, damn. Darn. _Yikes_. Why do you have this?” 

“It needs our help!”

“Please tell me that this isn't one of the Squipped rats.”

“Can't tell you that because it's not true. I'm not a fibber. They gave the others summer sun and they just died, one by one. Mom is an animal lover, so she saved this one, in her pocket. Our landlord doesn't allow animals, so…” 

“Given the situation, your landlord’s the least of your problems… of our problems, I mean.” 

Ridwana looks up at Michael like she might cry. “He's a big deal, okay? He has no concept of tenant rights. Do you just want the last of the thirty-five Squipped rats to die? This could be your chance to do observations! And give him a good home! He deserves that, as much as any other living creature.”

Michael sighs. “Maybe he does.” 

“So you’ll take him?” 

Michael rubs his forehead. The area behind his eyes is hurting. He's got the box under one arm. The creature inside keeps throwing itself against the walls. Its Squip might be connected to other Squips, rat or otherwise, though if it hadn't died along with the others at the lab, that seems to indicate a lack of connectivity among squipped rats. It still has mad problem causing potential, even if it's not bugged. Michael has seen Pinky and the Brain. He knows what overly intelligent rodents are like. 

“My favorite part of your paper was where you talked about the cultural impact of complicated declension symptoms, like with the Germans.” 

“Michael! Please? His name in Maadhav. He needs you.”

“What does that mean?” Michael asks, voice dull, as his resolve crumbles. 

“Sweet. Like honey.”

Michael’s stomach sinks. 

“Yeah. Fine. I'll take care of him.”

 

————-

Michael does some research on rat habitats, and buys an enormous cage from Petsmart on the way home. It's way bigger than the dump that Michael the Fish gets to live in, and way more expensive than Michael can afford. He buys wooden caves, toys, and fleece to cover the wire ramps that allow Maadhav to climb throughout the cage. The fleece prevents him from getting bumblefoot, a diseases which frequently afflicts rats who walk on wire surfaces. 

With Jeremy and Christine’s help, he gets the cage comfortably set up in the living room. 

They’ll have to talk quietly from now on. Michael isn't sold on the idea that Maadhav the rat isn't a fluffy spy. 

Jeremy is somewhere between being uncomfortable with him, and trying to help him. Jeremy watches him for hours.

“What do you want?” Jeremy asks the rat. 

Maadhav doesn't answer. He scampers around, as rats are wont to do.

Days pass. Michael reads more about rat care. It's cruel to keep an animal like that in its cage all day, so he, Jeremy, and Christine take turns letting him out. He doesn't bite. He behaves more like a pet than a monster. The most nefarious thing it does is pee on every surface it encounters. It pees on the kitchen table, and it pees on Jeremy. It pees on Michael and Christine. It pees copiously upon every item in its cage. Maadhav, as it turns out, really likes peeing, and according to what Michael can find on the internet, that's consistent with ordinary rat behavior. 

“What do you want?” Jeremy repeats another night. This time, he has his iPhone out, and notepad open. 

“T-O-M-A-T-O-E-S,” types the rat. 

(Typing is not consistent with ordinary rat behavior.)

“His objective is tomatoes,” Jeremy reports. 

Squips are supposed to figure out the main goals of their hosts, and make them happen, regardless of consequences, like the wish granting monkey’s paw in that one children's story. Maadhav, being a rat, has much easier objectives than your average human. 

“Should we give him tomatoes?” asks Christine. “What do you think the ethics behind that are?” 

“Are neither of you freaked that he can type?” asks Michael. 

“T-O-M-A-T-O-E-S,” Maadhav types again. 

“I hate this,” says Jeremy. “I hate everything about this. I'm going to give him a tomato.” 

True to his word, Jeremy leaves and comes back with a tomato from the fridge. He sets it down on the table, but he does not look happy about it. Maadhav, on the other hand, seems thrilled, as he bites into the tomato with gusto. 

“What even would a rat’s Squip be?” Jeremy asks. 

“A lady rat?” Christine guesses. 

“A scientist?” suggests Michael. He knows that Jeremy’s Squip was Keanu Reeves, and that he was a threatening Squip. A lady rat doesn’t seem notorious or frightening enough. 

They lapse into silence after that, sitting around the table, as they watch Maadhav eat his fill. 

“What else do you want?” Michael pushes the phone forward. When Maadhav doesn't instantly respond, he scratches him behind his little ear. “Come on,” he says. “Tell us what's it's doing to that tiny brain of yours.” 

“S-E-X,” the rat spells. Jeremy’s head jerks up. 

“I'm not comfortable with this,” he says. 

“Animals generally do want… that,” Christine points out. 

“Animals generally speaking want to decide who they do _that_ with,” says Jeremy. “Like, I know… I know there are instincts at play or whatever, and I don't know what rats look for in a mate, but they must look for something, but now he can't choose what to look for anymore, or decide he's not in the mood, or _anything_.” 

Christine frowns. Michael feels a pang of worry. Is Jeremy talking about the rat or himself? Sometimes it's better not to ask. 

“Maybe he’ll have to stay a horny little friend,” Christine suggests, smile wavering.

Jeremy buries his head in his hands, sweater sleeves muffling his words. “That's not funny,” he mutters. 

As days pass, Jeremy buys more tomatoes. He gets big tomatoes. He gets expensive, organic tomatoes, and presents them as though they are an apology. He does not get or advocate getting a girlfriend for their new pet. He continues to offer his phone to Maadhav, but his communication abilities seem limited to pleas for tomatoes and sex. It's reassuring. If his new pet rat started to compose sonnets or something, Michael is sure that the the last threads of his sanity would go straight out the window. 

Jeremy texts Michael incessantly, to remind him to be careful talking in Maadhav’s presence, like Michael could forget. The last thing he wants is for that animal to know all of his secrets. Nonetheless, Jeremy keeps reminding him. He gets like that when he's freaked out. 

———-

 

Having Maadhav means that Michael stops getting breaks. Whatever comfort Jeremy was able to find with leaving Michael alone now and then dies. It's always Maadhav this, and Maadhav that. During his lunch breaks at work, Michael retreats to his car, bundles into a sweatshirt, pulls hood over his head, and curls up with his headphones on and his hands covering them. He packs lunches that he doesn't eat. He's two hundred bucks in the hole from buying that rat cage, so calling in sick isn't an option. 

Manager Creepy Face insinuates that Michael isn't doing well enough, but they might be able to work something out, if he proves his worth. Maybe they could even get him permanently stationed in back, doing repairs, instead of out on the floor. 

Jeremy texts him multiple times about how he's read that produce should not make up more than ten percent of a rat’s diet, but Maadhav is now refusing any food that isn't tomatoes. The rat has figured out how to use emojis now, and prefers that to typing out words. It soon becomes evident that Maadhav has more tricks up his sleeve (not that he has sleeves), when he starts using Jeremy’s phone to text people strings of tomato emojis. 

(Thank god that the phone doesn't have a sex emoji, at least not one that a rat would understand.)

Five days after bringing Maadhav home, he dies from tomato induced diarrhea. 

Christine tries to make a thing out his funeral. She purchases a pretty box on one of her New York City trips, and a sparkly apple shaped charm, which she bought thinking it was a tomato. Christine wants to bury Maadhav in the lot behind the Thai restaurant. 

“You are coming to his funeral, aren't you?” she asks Michael and Jeremy.

“I'm taking a nap,” Michael says. This has all been one of his stupidest misadventures, and he's so done with it. 

“Me too,” says Jeremy. 

“Seriously, guys? I'm not going out there to do this by myself.” 

Okay, so refusing to go was a dick move. Michael can acknowledge that. He can even be the first one to get down on his hands and knees and do the digging, seeing as how they don't have a shovel. Jeremy, who has also realized the doucheyness of his ways, comes too. He kneels down next to Michael to help with the dig the grave, and so does Christine. When they lower Maadhav’s box into the ground, Jeremy won't look at it. 

“Should we say something?” asks Christine. “You know, to commemorate him?” 

“Go for it,” Michael says. 

Christine stands up, clearing her throat. 

“Here lies Maadhav, who taught us a lot in his short life, like how we shouldn't listen to the stupid technology in our brains.” Christine kicks at the piled dirt at her feet. It's the only flash of anger that she shows, before taking a deep breath, and composing himself. “May he be blessed with companionship, and a balanced diet, wherever he is now.” 

“I'll drink to that,” says Michael. 

“Are we gonna?” Jeremy asks. “Drink? I'm all for drinking.” 

“Yeah. You sure you wanna?” Usually Jeremy doesn't. His relationship with alcohol is complicated. He nods, however, and Michael isn't about to tell him no. Jeremy is the master of his own self-destructive tailspins. 

Michael, Jeremy, and Christine finish covering Maadhav’s grave. Christine and Jeremy go back inside, Christine saying something about how she'll get the cage cleaned up, and see if she can't sell in on Craig’s list, to make back some of Michael’s money. Michael goes to the store, and picks up a case of beer. When Michael gets back home he, Christine, and Jeremy situate themselves on the couch, to work their way through the drinks, none of them speaking. Only Christine has her computer open, typing away. Although she takes a few sips out of her beer, perhaps in solidarity, she doesn't finish it. 

Jeremy is five beers deep, before he says anything. “Are you gonna write up something for the network about this?” he asks. 

“I don't want to get Ridwana in trouble,” Michael says. 

“I already am writing something,” says Christine. “You’ll have to be the one to send it, of course. Get some science people to look at it.” 

“But—”

“The Squip made him _die_ ,” says Jeremy. “It killed him. He’s dead. It didn't care about his survival or not killing him or anything. He… he had his objective, and…” 

“Exactly,” says Christine. 

“Is that anything new, though?” asks Michael. “We know that Squips focus on their hosts’ objectives. We know that they don't care about collateral damage. So, people mess up their friendships and try to take over the world. Animals eat tomatoes until they shit themselves to death. This isn't new information.” 

Jeremy wraps his arms around himself where he sits. He starts to curl into knees, only to abruptly straighten.

“Bud.” Michael's voice is low. He puts a hand on Jeremy’s back. 

“Didn't Ridwana say that the rats they gave Red to also died?” 

Michael nods. 

“So we don't know how they'd do after. Like, if they'd be permanently fucked and eat themselves to death even with the thing deactivated.” 

Christine pauses in her typing. “We have lots of human examples,” she says. “We don't need rats to tell us how we will behave, because we have ourselves to tell us how we will behave.” 

“I'm so sorry for what a jerk it made me,” Jeremy says. “I was terrible. I sucked. I mean, I do. I suck. I'm terrible. And I'm so, so sorry.” 

Michael looks up at the ceiling. He takes a breath to gather strength. If asked, he would say that he didn't have the energy right now to deal with another person’s outflowing of penitence and anxiety. When it comes to Jeremy, though, Michael always finds the energy somehow. 

“Okay, bud,” he says. “First of all, don't talk about my best friend like that. Second of all, come here.” 

Jeremy does. He leans into Michael just like he would have done four years ago, no dead animals necessary.

———————

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning - pet death (and rat poop), animal testing


	6. Chapter 6 - Michael

When Michael had first talked to Christine about renting a place together, he'd been aware that Jeremy would want in. Just moving back to New Jersey after so much time in Vermont had brought with it the distinct possibility of Jeremy. It's not like Michael hadn't had a life up in Vermont. He had. He'd been dating this guy, Kevin, and it'd been fun. Not fraught, the way things were with Jeremy. Kevin didn't have a panic button close to the surface. He liked basketball, dense autobiographies, and hooking up with nerds. Michael, being pure unadulterated nerd, had suited Kevin well enough. 

It wasn't like they'd had nothing in common, either. Kevin liked nineties cartoons, and used phrases like “the bomb” and “talk to the hand”, sometimes even unironically. He got Michael’s humor, and what was more unusual, Michael usually got his. If Michael had chosen to stay in Vermont, he could've chosen to stay with Kevin, and that would’ve worked out. Kevin would definitely be contributing more to rent than Christine, who needs her morning's free for auditions, and accepts a low paycheck as a necessary evil of getting to work in her chosen field. Kevin wouldn't _be_ Christine, though. Maybe that makes Michael a bad friend, or at least a bad boyfriend, that he's willing to prioritize people like that. Maybe people aren't supposed to always see the people they met in high school as _their people_ at the exclusion of everybody else. It's not like Michael chose to be the way he is, though, and besides, he'd never been able to explain the Network to Kevin. Dating someone who doesn't understand this big event in Michael’s life, which pretty much changed a gazillion things about how he sees the world, isn't practical or desirable. 

Above and beyond that, Michael is still super in love with Jeremy, and it sucks. 

—————-

It's another late night, and Michael is scrolling the Network. Nothing new there! There are no big disasters, which means that a big disaster is probably looming. Story of Michael's life! Having Jeremy constantly around is a major disaster. Michael has got the couch tonight, and it smells like Jeremy. He can feel echoes of Jeremy’s skin on the pillow and on the blanket. Jeremy’s inhaler, frequently embrace by Jeremy’s lips, is on the beside table, where he forgot it. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, Jeremy leaves the place where he's meant to be sleeping in order to get it. Sometimes, Michael is asleep when it happens, and in his state of half awareness, all Michael can register is that Jeremy is close. Tomorrow night, Michael will have the bed, which feels even more strongly saturated with Jeremy than the couch does. 

How did Michael get this way? How did he become so strongly orientated towards somebody who ought to only be a friend, and who had messed up their friend status more than once? For so much of his life, it’d unwittingly been Michael’s job to hold Jeremy together. Before the Squip, it’d been a matter of providing a dissenting voice to Jeremy’s own feeling of inadequacy, and keeping an eye on what was going on at Jeremy’s home, because his mom was verifiably crazy. After the Squip, Jeremy had been the verifiably crazy one, and Michael had gotten into the habit of helping him deal with that. Post-Squip Jeremy saw things that weren't there. He had periods where he couldn't keep track of what was happening around him. He went through episodes where he couldn't speak, and panic attacks, and times when he just couldn't handle himself. 

Jeremy is learning how to handle himself now. Maybe that's a process he started while he and Michael were apart. It's not that he no longer sees the Squip. Michael suspects that he still does. It's that he has more coping methods than ever, and doesn't always turn to Michael, Michael, and only Michael when those methods falter. 

Those methods are faltering a ton, after the whole thing with the rat. Michael could scream at Ridwana, only screaming at somebody who has had their brain messed with is morally wrong. Michael doesn't scream at Ridwana. He keeps looking over her homework, and telling her how wonderful it is. 

But it's late at night. It's so very late, but Michael has to keep track. He has to. 

_Ping!_

A message, and not from Ridwana! It's from Mrs. Hameln, the leader of the Network, who rarely contacts Michael directly. 

PiedPiper1958: Hi Michael… 

PiedPiper1958: We have a verified outbreak in eastern Malaysia… 

cartoon-allstarz: shit how big 

PiedPiper1958: Fourteen students… We have a contact… I need you to send them the summer sun… I've looked up US mail customs, and they don't allow you to send liquids to Malaysia… Am I correct in believing you know a few things about the creation and consumption of “edibles”?

PiedPiper1958: LOL (Laughing Out Loud)

cartoon-allstarz: I'm on it. 

PiedPiper1958: wilde-empress337 came clean to me about your unfortunate rodent issue…

PiedPiper1958: I'm truly sorry…

PiedPiper1958: 🤣🐀

cartoon-allstarz: its all good. Don't get mad at her. 

PiedPiper1958: I will not…

PiedPiper1958: You should begin your cooking…

PiedPiper1958: I will find a secure means of getting the mailing address to you..

PiedPiper1958: 🔪

PiedPiper1958: That is a cooking knife…

PiedPiper1958: LOL (Laughing Out Loud)

 

There's no chance of sleeping from then on out, though Michael is aware that rest of the house is doing just that, so he doesn't blast his music, and he does his best to muffle his footsteps around the kitchen. 

There are several options for cooking with Mountain Dew Red. It depends on what Michael has on hand, and how long he wants the goods to last without going stale. Mountain Dew Red brownies are the tastiest, as the chocolate masks the rancidly sweet flavor of the Red itself. They also dry out fast in the mail, and are quick to grow mold. Besides that, chocolate never lasts long in the Crane Street house, so it's not usually on the list of available ingredients. 

A rummage through the cupboards brings up sugar, flour, eggs, butter, and milk. Those can be turned into cookies easily enough. There's peanut butter too, which isn't necessary to the composition of the cookies, but makes a delicious addition. Michael adds that to the assembly of ingredients on the counter. He goes through the area under the sink, which is always a mess. The Crane Street apartment has a vast assortment of cooking utensils, for moments just such as this. The problem is that Michael sucks at keeping it orderly between uses. Jeremy is better, but he doesn't know about the hidden stuff under the sink. Michael has to dig past four heavy pans to get to his blender, and when he does, the glass is cracked. Fine. Whatever. Who needs to blend when stirring will do just fine? 

The big cooking bowl is all the way in back. Michael’s attempt at wrestling it out causes a mini avalanche of clattering metalware. 

“Fuck!” 

Two bedroom doors open. Christine and Jeremy stick their heads out. 

“Is everything okay?” Christine asks. 

“Awesome!” Michael gives her a peace sign. 

“I’ll help,” Jeremy offers. He doesn't know what Michael’s doing, but he's not going to make him do it alone!

“I have an audition tomorrow,” Christine says. “Will you two be okay without me?” 

“Mega okay,” says Michael. “You won't want to help with this anyway. I know stuff with Red makes you queasy.” 

“Good luck!” 

Jeremy kneels beside Michael, stacking the pots and pans covering the floor back into the cupboard. He doesn't do it with any more logic and organization than Michael himself would, but he does it, until everything is inside and he's forcing the door shut. 

Something shatters. 

“Don’t worry about that,” Michael says quickly. “There's always smashed stuff in there. I'll deal with it next time I cook.” 

“Sorry.” 

“It's fine.” 

“Sorry anyway.” 

“We’re good.”

“What are we making?” Jeremy asks. Finally, something other than an apology, and Michael loves him a little for it. It's not _why are we cooking at ass o’clock?_ It doesn't matter what they're cooking. Jeremy is in for the adventure. Quickly, Michael fills him in about the Malaysia outbreak, and the plan to make Mountain Dew Red spiked peanut butter cookies to cure it. 

“Better leave out the peanut butter,” Jeremy says. 

“Okay, why?” 

“It’s a common allergy. If somebody is already having a seizure and going into a coma from the Squip deactivation, they won't know that they're also going into… how do you say it? Apathetic shock?”

“Apathetic shock,” Michael agrees. He unscrews the peanut butter jar, dips a spoon in, and takes a bite. It's out, he's hungry, and lucky for him, he isn't apathetic. He licks the spoon clean, and hands it to Jeremy, who does the same, before tossing it in the sink. 

“Classy, dude. I slobbered all over that.” 

“We've shared spit before. I mean…” Jeremy’s ears start to turn the same color as the beverage that is to be the main ingredient in their cooking extravaganza. 

“Look, never mind. Let's get our cookie on.” 

Making the cookies involves Jeremy finding a recipe on his phone, and reading off the ingredients, while Michael combines them. Michael has learned the hard way that just throwing things into a bowl and hoping to get some kind of baked good as the end result is dumb and stupid and more importantly doesn't work. So, he gets Jeremy to find a recipe with a twenty cookie yield, and makes sure it's one that includes water. Substituting water for Mountain Dew Red does the trick in cases like these. 

“How’re you doing in your classes?” Michael asks, as he combines the dry ingredients. He and Jeremy haven't talked much, as Michael has been recovering from the rat disaster.

“Good! Better than last time I tried to do this. I think… I think… so, I think working at my own schedule helps. I'm not running into the problem where I zone out during lectures. If I catch myself zoning out, I get up and walk around.” 

“I know,” says Michael. He’s becoming thoroughly used to Jeremy alternating between doing his homework, and doing stuff around the house. On good days, he can work for hours at a stretch. On others he's up every fifteen minutes. He stops to wash his hands. He stops to take photos. He stops to draw spirals or cook stuff. None of that is a big deal. Jeremy gets his work done or partially done every day. It's not paralyzing him like it did in Vermont. 

“I'm proud of you, dude,” Michael says. 

“You are? I mean… don't be. I'm super behind where I'm supposed to be. I'm doing crap that everyone else has already done. I'm not even good at it.” 

“Seems like you’re doing fine to me. You’re brave for giving school another try. A lot of people wouldn't.” 

“I'm stupid.” 

Michael puts down his bowl and his spoon, taking Jeremy by the shoulders. “Insulting yourself isn't a virtue.” 

Jeremy looks down. 

“I know it taught you to do that, as… like… the first step to getting better, but it doesn't accomplish anything.” 

“Sorry.” 

Michael frowns. Ridiculously, he thinks of Jenna's three outdoor cats. Two of them love to hunt, periodically bringing her gifts of birds and decapitated rodents. The third loves to hunt most of all, but never catches anything but leaves. It's funny. It places leaves by her doorstep several times a day. It brings them to her bed and tries to put them in her mouth when she's sleeping. It's incessant and ineffective, and a product of some instinct that went wrong along the way. Jeremy’s apologies are the same. It's not a behavior that he can stop, and it stems from something real, but the meat is missing. 

“Could you grab the eggs and start beating them?” Michael asks. 

“Y-yeah.” 

“Cool.” 

Michael and Jeremy add the beaten eggs, melted butter, and Mountain Dew Red to the mixture. 

“Which of your classes do you like best?” Michael asks. 

“Probably Freshman Seminar. It's all about how to study. I could've used that before.” 

“Nice! What're you getting from it?” 

“Note taking methods and stuff. Tips on active reading. You know, like concentrating on things you read, instead of just turning pages.” 

“Cool, cool.” Michael leans against the counter, stirring the batter. He sticks his finger in, to try a bite. It's grainy, and could've really used that peanut butter, but he figures it'll bake okay. 

“I'll grease the cooking pan,” Jeremy says. While he does it, Michael continues to stir the batter, and throws in another splash of Red for good measure. It doesn't take much to set the Squip deactivation sequence in progress, but it's better to be safe than sorry. 

“You know much about this outbreak?” Jeremy asks. 

“Nada. All I know is those fuckers are getting shut the fuck off.” 

“You think you’re spending too much time on the Network?” Jeremy asks, more tentative this time.

“Nope.” 

“Are you sure? ‘Cause you don't seem to sleep a lot, and—”

“It's fine,” Michael says, a note of warning in his voice. 

“Christine says you’re on more since I'm here.” 

“Not everything is about you.” 

“That's not—” Jeremy shuts his mouth abruptly, and looks behind him. He grabs his phone off the counter, and takes a picture of the air. 

Nobody in the Squip Squad would ever call Christine the team gossip. That's Jenna’s role through and through. That said, she’s absolutely the reason that Michael knows what Jeremy is about with the whole compulsive photography thing, and apparently she's also the reason Jeremy knows he isn't sleeping. Christine is fast proving a vital part of spreading everybody’s sensitive information to everybody else. Michael would be mad, if he didn't know that she had to be doing it in the hope that he and Jeremy would take care of each other. 

Michael gives the cookie dough one more quick stir, then digs into it with his hands, rolling the dough into little balls, which he puts onto the baking pan. 

“I'm gonna skip this part,” says Jeremy. 

“Good plan.” 

Like everyone who has ever taken a Squip, Mountain Dew Red sends Jeremy into a world of pain. That’s not to say that it doesn't have its uses. It quiets the machinery in Jeremy’s head, when it gets too loud, but it's a last ditch effort for dealing with things. Jeremy has described the Squip condition as being similar to his asthma in some ways. If he needs his inhaler, he needs his inhaler, and should take it without question. However, on a day to day basis, if he can make small changes to his life to keep his inhaler use down, like having a dust free living space, and taking daily medication, that's the better option, and helps him avoid some unwanted side effects. Taking his inhaler doesn't quite make Jeremy scream his brains out the way that Red does, but it elevates his heart rate. Not he best thing for somebody with anxiety. 

Michael gets the rest of the cookie balls onto the pan, heats up the toaster oven, and puts them inside. As far as saving the world goes, baking cookies is a delicious and relaxing way to accomplish that. Michael is glad that Mrs. Hameln gave him the task. 

Jeremy is staring at Michael, though. That's kind of weird. Is it a good weird? Maybe it would be, if he'd blink or something. 

“Wanna play a round of Mario Cart while they bake?” Michael asks. 

“Yeah!” 

Michael gets the game set up on the TV. Unbelievably, he and Jeremy haven't played video games together since Jeremy moved in. They haven't done it since Jeremy left college. They'd seen each other here and there, of course, but only at group get togethers or in short spurts. 

Jeremy wastes ten minutes trying to choose his character. Michael lets him. 

“You’ve gotten worse at this,” Michael points out, the first time Jeremy loses. 

“I'm out of practice.” 

“Are you alright?” Michael asks, the second time. 

Jeremy grimaces, rubbing his temples. Sniffing the air, Michael casts his eyes towards the toaster oven. The cookies are starting to fill the room with a sweet, rich bakery smell. Christine has complained before that any baking Michael does with the Red makes her want to hurl. 

“Hang in there a second.” 

Michael gets up, grabs a towel from the bathroom, and places it under Christine's door, to block the Mountain Dew Red fumes. He opens up all the windows, and checks the timer on his phone. 

Jeremy has begun to twitch. 

Five more minutes. Jeremy’s face and hands are getting all spasmy. 

“You with me?” Michael asks. 

“Yeah.” 

“I'd send you out, but I'm not sure I want you walking down stairs on your own. Go stand by the window, alright?” 

Jeremy does, gulping in the cool night air. 

Two minutes later, the alarm on Michael's phone goes off, and he leaps into action, opening the oven and grabbing the pan so fast that he forgets to cover his hands. 

“Ow! Shit!” 

Jeremy turns towards him. 

“Ignore my dumb ass,” Michael orders. 

His second attempt at getting the cookies out of the oven and onto the counter to cool goes better. Now he just needs to clear their smell out of the room, so that neither of his roommates have a seizure or something. 

Best way to do that is to give it time, and get Jeremy outside while that time is happening. 

“Let's go,” Michael says. 

Jeremy doesn't ask where they’re going. He pulls his shirt up over his nose and mouth, and lets Michael guide him out the door, down the stairs, and outside. 

It's a dark night. The street lamps are on, but all the shops are closed, and there's not a car in sight. 

“How're you feeling?” Michael asks. 

“—m okay.” 

“You sure?”

Jeremy puts his hand up. He needs a few minutes before he'll be able to talk much. There are dozens of darkened windows around them, and one bright one above, where Michael can make out the vague outline of his own kitchen. 

“I want a Mario Cart rematch,” Jeremy says finally. “One where you're not trying to poison me!” 

Michael bursts out laughing. “You're on. I’ll have you know, I don't need to resort to chemical warfare to beat you at video games.” 

“Sure you don't.” 

“I don't!” 

“Do too!” 

“Nope.” 

Silence. Jeremy looks around. Jeremy doesn't like silence, unless that silence has been planned and talked about. In the absence of any reasons being given for the quiet, Jeremy tends to leap to the worst possible conclusion. Michael isn't talking! Michael hates him! He deserves to be hated! He's sucky and stupid and ugly and evil and bad! So on and do forth. Jeremy’s inner monologue is insidious, and so loud that Michael knows it almost as well as Jeremy himself. 

“Did the fumes make the voices in your head shut up at least?” Michael asks. 

“Huh?” Jeremy fiddles with the edge of his shirt, looking away. “They’re always quiet these days. They aren't a big deal any more.” 

“Don't BS me.” 

“I'm not.” 

“The photos and the things you’ve been throwing out say otherwise.” 

“That's my business,” Jeremy says, a defensive note to his voice. Michael sighs. Does he really want to make Jeremy fight?

More silence. Have the fumes cleared out of the kitchen yet? Doubtful. 

“Let's take a walk,” says Michael. 

“Okay,” Jeremy answers, very quietly. 

Michael takes hold of Jeremy’s wrist. He's probably still zonked and headachy. Michael needs to be close and present and not antagonize him. Jeremy closes his hand around Michael’s, and falls into place at his side. Michael can feel the contact everywhere in his body, but especially in his chest and the lower part of his stomach. 

There aren't many places to go, especially this time of night. Michael’s feet move, one in front of the other, without really thinking about the direction. A crescent moon shines down from the sky, among a smattering of stars. Everything is pretty, from the trees to the bricks beneath Michael’s feet. He's almost ashamed of himself for thinking that. It's sappy, for one thing. 

They come to the end of the street. If Michael turns left, they'll end up at the grocery store, which is closed. If he turns right, they'll end up at the old mill building. Michael turns right. It's not far, and Jeremy hasn't seen it. 

“Is your headache any better?” Michael asks. 

Jeremy hums. “I hear water.” 

“Yep! We’re getting close.” 

“Close to what?” 

The running water sound gets louder as Jeremy and Michael approach the old mill. Michael's not sure what it used to be used for. There's a damn though, which is almost as good as a waterfall. There's a river, and there's a chain link fence keeping anybody from getting too close. 

“Check it out,” says Michael. 

“Wow.” 

“I know, right?” 

“Are we supposed to be here?” 

“Why not? As long as we don't try to climb over the fence, we're golden.” 

Jeremy moves forward, and for a flash Michael worries that his words had the unintended consequence of planting on idea in Jeremy’s head, and he _is_ going to climb the fence, but he doesn't. He just goes right up to it, and presses his face and hands into it, staring intently at the water beyond. 

“This is good,” Jeremy says. “Why haven't I been here before?” 

“You’re too studious,” teases Michael. It might not be true. Maybe what Jeremy really is is isolated. 

Jeremy gives Michael a quick, uncertain smile, and then presses his face back against the fence. 

The water rushes over the dam. It shines. There's moonlight in Jeremy’s hair. Michael wants to touch it. He reaches out, then stops himself. He shivers. It gives him an idea. 

“You must be cold,” he says to Jeremy, shrugging out of his sweatshirt. 

“I'm fine.” 

“Dude, you’re wearing a t-shirt. Put this on.” Without waiting for an answer, Michael drapes it over Jeremy’s arms.

“Does this say what I think it says?” 

“Blame Brooke.” 

“This is awesome.” 

“How are you just noticing this?” 

“Sorry.” 

There are a lot of things that Michael would like to say to that, but he bites them back. When all is said and done, it's probably his own fault that Jeremy apologizes so much. He picked just the wrong time to demand one from Jeremy back when shit went down, and now that's tangled into Jeremy’s conceptualization of the whole heinous experience. 

“The sweatshirt needs patches,” Jeremy says, pulling it around himself. “I like it, but I like your old one better.” 

“I still have my old one.” 

“Good.” 

Jeremy hugs the sweatshirt close to his body. Is he sniffing it? Michael’s not going to pay too much mind to that. Jeremy has no reason to do this kind of thing. Jeremy is just weird. 

“You’re not as happy as you used to be,” Jeremy says. 

_”What the hell”_ , Michael thinks. 

“What?” is all he says. 

“You don't… like… bounce when you walk.” 

Michael spreads his arms. “I got no explanation for you, man. Maybe it's a growing up thing.” 

“I wasn't BSing you when I said the voices are quieter. Yes, they're still around. Yes, they still effect me. Doesn't mean I’m lying when I say mine is the loudest.” 

“Okay.” 

“I want to change some things about my voice.” 

Michael takes a step forward to stand beside Jeremy, pressing his face against the fence to watch the water just like Jeremy is doing. 

“That's not a comforting sentiment, coming from you.” 

“Maybe change isn't the right word? Maybe it can be the same voice, and I can just change how I listen to it. I'd like to be bolder about relationship shit. I'd like to figure out what role my instincts get to play from here on out. Dad would say to always listen to them, and the Squip would say to never listen to them. Some nuance would be nice. That's what I want.” 

“That's deep.” 

Jeremy faces Michael. “It's been seven years since the Squip. My instincts still haven't made up their mind about whether I should make these enormous rushed decisions, or if maybe I should just hide somewhere and lick my wounds for fucking ever.” 

“What kind of rushed decisions?” 

“Move in with Christine and Michael. It’ll solve everything!” 

Michael's throat tightens. “Are you planning on moving out?” 

“No! No. No, I don't want to do that.” 

Michael can breathe again. 

Michael can breathe, but maybe he shouldn't let himself. 

“I'm serious,” he says. “Do you think you’re gonna… get overwhelmed, or whatever it is you do, and pull something drastic?”

Jeremy shakes his head. “I’m sorry I always mess things up. I know I’ve ruined a lot of things. I'm sorry.” 

Michael's jaw clenches. “You can apologize,” he says. He's got to remind himself. Trying to make Jeremy stop apologizing causes more harm than good. “As much as you want, if that's what you need. You know I’ve forgiven you. I wish you'd do something other than apologize, though.” 

“What?” 

“So, it’s hard for me when you leave. You know that.” 

“I know. I'm sorry.” 

“You can fix it really easily by not leaving.” Michael pushes his hand up through his hair. “Maybe not easily. I get that you leave because things are going bad and you can't handle it, but it'd mean a lot to me if you could stop doing that and stay.” 

“I want to stay,” Jeremy says. 

Michael can't answer. He can't answer, so he closes his eyes. He closes his eyes, and he listens to Jeremy’s breathing, and the rush of water. 

When Michael opens them, Jeremy is staring at his lips. Jeremy is staring at his lips. It's been years since Jeremy last kissed Michael, yet Michael can remember the way his lips felt, chapped and narrow, insistent and uncertain in turns, sometimes scabbed and rough if he'd been chewing on them. It's a lot to think about. It's too much. 

“We should go home,” Michael says. “Kitchen should be cleared by now.” 

“Okay,” Jeremy agrees. 

They don't say anything on the way back. They don't say anything as the head off to their separate sleeping areas. 

They don't say anything, until Michael _does_. 

“Jeremy?” 

Jeremy stops in his tracks. Michael bridges the gap between them, to kiss Jeremy on the cheek. 

“Sleep well, buddy. Take care of yourself.” 

Jeremy makes a sound that doesn't resemble any word that Michael has ever heard.

“What was that, bud?” 

“Sleep well!” Jeremy echoes. “Seriously. Sleep well. And… uh. Try to get some actual sleep instead of staying up all night on the Network.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is about at the halfway mark! Now would be a great time to leave a comment if you're feeling so inclined.


	7. Chapter 7 - Jeremy

Weeks pass at the Crane Street house. Rosh Hashannah, Yom Kippur, and Halloween fly by. Thanksgiving is “bogus” (to use a Michaelism), but it's one of those things that marks the passage of the year, and it’s coming up fast.

Jeremy is okay. He's used to life by now. He's okay. 

He passes all his midterms, and he's okay. 

He gets an A on one paper, and a D on another, and that's acceptable. He's okay. 

Michael still hates Best Buy. He's stressed and not always up for socializing, but that's allowed. 

Christine is directing Little Women. She's trying out for stuff. She's totally into it.

And Jeremy is okay. 

Jeremy’s fine. He's _got_ this adulthood thing, and it hasn't killed him yet. He cooks, does school work, and loves his friends. Sometimes he visits his dad. It's not a bad arrangement. 

———————

It's early evening, and Jeremy is cooking dinner. Christine made him a Spotify mix of underrated show tunes, and he's got _On My Way_ from _Violet_ playing. His show tune consumption has skyrocketed since moving in with Christine. It makes her excited, so Jeremy does it. Even if Jeremy hated show tunes, he'd be tempted to immerse himself in them, just to make Christine smile. He wonders how Michael doesn't. Because, sure, Michael gives Christine her turn to choose the household music and all, but he hasn't started playing stuff from musicals 24-7. 

Sometimes, Jeremy worries that there's more to Michael than there is to him. Jeremy just absorbs what other people like. He’s up to his ass in Christine's music. He and Michael are back at it with their video games, as Michael introduces Jeremy to “new” vintage titles that he learned about in college. It feels good, but should it?

In the months after the Squip, Rich had opened up to Jeremy about not knowing what he liked and what he didn't anymore. Going along with what your Squip wanted from you was kinda the point of having one. Rich had done that while the thing in his head erased and corrupted memories everything before. Like, he'd done a lot of internet catfishing pre-Squip, but that wasn't an illustrious hobby to be proud of. He'd played video games, but just the dumb ones that everybody played, so that didn't count as an interest. He'd learned ways to walk around his house without attracting attention, and ways to get food and water without getting hit. He'd been a pro at that even before the Squip came into the picture and improved his methods. Pre-Squip Richard Goranski had been mostly concerned with surviving. Post-Squip Richard Goranski was still forming a personality. 

Jeremy can clearly say that Eminem and push ups were Squip induced interests, and not something he wants to pursue further. The issue is, what if he's spent his life searching for humans that would fill up the empty spaces in him the same way that a Squip would, and none of his thoughts are his own? What if he's a soulless amalgamation of Christine and Michael, with the worst bits of his parents and a bucketload of trauma thrown in for good measure? What if there is no Jeremy Heere?

Yikes. Not fun.

Photography break! 

Cooking has been sending Jeremy into autopilot, and giving his mind lots of awful places to wander. Time to reign that shit back in. 

Jeremy turns off the hot plate, grabs his phone, and takes pictures around the kitchen. Just the kitchen. He hasn't gotten too bad this time. He doesn't need to do the living room and the balcony. The kitchen is enough. 

Only it's not. 

Totally not. 

The kitchen is so not enough. 

Jeremy takes a step back towards the hot plate, and then away from it again. The kitchen is **not** enough. He photographs the rest of the house, then he photographs the kitchen again, then he photographs the rest of the house again, incase anything’s changed. 

Finally, Jeremy goes back to the stove. Because Jeremy is fine. Jeremy is okay. 

Jeremy is getting bolder with his recipes, which just goes to show how fine and okay he is. If Michael can pour expired Mountain Dew Red into cookie batter and come out with something edible, there's nothing that can't be done. Jeremy takes that as inspiration, and adds lots of garlic to everything he makes, going above and beyond what his recipes call for. It's genius. Even simple things, like grilled cheese, can benefit from garlic. Besides, it means they won't have to deal with vampires. 

(Not that vampires are real, but life doesn't make sense, so who knows.)

Tonight's menu is not grilled cheese with garlic. It's spaghetti with garlic cream sauce. The whole thing with Maadhav has thrown Jeremy permanently off tomatoes, but cream sauce is delicious, so it's not a total loss. 

Christine comes in while the sauce is simmering. She's has a bag of something, which she puts down on the table. 

“Smells good,” she says. “You’re playing ‘Violet’!”

(Jeremy gets a rush from that.)

“Did you have an audition?” 

“I did! And I have the best news.” 

“What is it?” 

“I'm not saying a word until Michael gets here.” 

“You got a part, didn't you?” 

Christine hums. “I think my favorite line from Violet is _’We kept our nightmares on the shelf. Our dreams were on the table._ ’ Isn't that nice?” 

Jeremy turns down the heat on the stove, and sits across from Christine. The sauce can simmer while they talk. “You’re trying to distract me.” 

A shrug. Jeremy leans over to peer into Christine's bag, but she catches him in the act, and hugs it to her. “No!” She's grinning as she says it, widely, in a way that shows her dimples. “Tell me your top five favorite quotes from underrated musicals,” she says. “It'll keep you busy.” 

“Okay, um…”

(Jeremy is on quote number four by the time Michael gets in. His quotes are never as clever or profound as Christine's, and in this case, they all come from Great Comet.)

When Michael opens the door, his hood is up, and his headphones are on. He gives Jeremy and Christine a distracted peace sign, and walks past them. Christine follows him with her eyes. She opens her mouth to say his name, then closes it. 

“Better not,” Jeremy says. 

Christine pouts, continuing to stare after Michael. 

“You can always tell me what's going on.” 

That snaps Christine out of it. “Nice try.” She stands up. “Finish up with dinner. I'll see you in a bit.” 

With that, she shoulders her bag, and disappears into her room, leaving Jeremy with nothing to do but boil noodles by himself. 

Dinner, once it's finished, does not lure Michael into socializing. He nabs a bowl, gives Jeremy a thumbs up, and goes to the bedroom to eat it. Not a big deal, and not weird, but still not conducive to finding out Christine’s big news. She eats with Jeremy, but she can't stay still. One minute she's sitting at the table, shoveling noodles into her mouth. The next she's up and pacing, noodles abandoned, and the next she remembers the noodles, picks up the bowl, and sits on the kitchen counter to eat them. From there it's back to shoveling. 

“I can't talk about my big thing,” Christine says, “but I can tell you about Little Women rehearsals.” 

“Tell me about Little Women rehearsals.” Jeremy folds his hands under his chin to gaze up at Christine and listen. 

“You know how we're doing our own thing instead of the Broadway musical?” 

“Uh-huh.” 

“I read an interview, about how the director of the Broadway musical told the cast not to read the novel, because the show was too different. It really was, too. The book deals with all of the sisters evenly, but the musical was more or less just the story of Jo. Well, that's one problem our production doesn't have.” 

“Gotta love a good ensemble cast!” 

“The kids decided that Astonishing, from the Broadway musical, was a great song, so they’re using it, but they're giving it to Amy instead of Jo. Amy! Jo is very open about being a non-binary lesbian. They don't sing a song about that, but they have many monologues about it. Laurie supports them, though I've had to have a few stern talks with Thomas, the boy playing Laurie, to keep him in line. The kids are having fun. I love that they’re having fun.” 

“What direction are you going with the costumes?” Jeremy asks. It’s a ploy. His questions always are. They're the prompts that are needed to get Christine talking, because it's impossible to feel upset or worried about anything when Christine is talking. 

Over the next several hours, Christine tells Jeremy about topics ranging from the trials of her Spirit Zone students, to why she has mixed feelings about Tuck Everlasting, to a funny book she saw at the bookstore of Grand Central, about crafting with cat hair. 

“I'm texting him,” Christine says, when the conversation runs dry. She picks up her phone, narrating as she types out her message. “Yo, Michael. Get your butt in here. Big things are afoot.” 

“Yo!” Michael’s in the room half a second later, brandishing his phone. “Are you a Broadway star yet?” 

“Not quite!” Christine clasps her hands together, leaping down off the table. “But I do have a gig! I'm going to be in a commercial! You are looking at the new face of _Broghurt_.”

“…Broghurt?” Jeremy has seen that ads for it. Everybody has. Broghurt (tagline - yoghurt for men) , has achieved ultimate meme status. Everyone jokes about it, even if they don't necessarily eat it. 

“I'm happy for you!” Michael says. “Happy, and really fucking confused. You don't exactly scream manly yoghurt, but good acting can accomplish anything.” 

“It's their new line,” Christine gushes. “Broghurt For Her. Why should yoghurt be intrinsically manly, just because it's bacon flavored?” 

“Yeah!” says Jeremy. “Glad I can't eat that one, but yeah!” 

“They gave me a bag. It also comes in Gatorade, jerky jamboree, and salty nut flavors. I'll get it. Let's celebrate!” 

As Christine rushes to her room, Michael and Jeremy exchange glances. 

“Salty nuts,” Michael whispers. Jeremy gives him a good shove. It's nice that they can joke like this again. It's almost normal. 

Christine hands Michael the Gatorade flavor yoghurt. Jeremy’s is meant to taste of vodka and Red Bull, though of course it's not alcoholic, being yoghurt. The first bite makes Jeremy want to barf. So do the tenth and eleventh bites. Each and every bite is a testament to the affection Jeremy bears Christine. 

“How do they sell this stuff?” Christine asks. She's got the salty nut flavor, and is making the most distressed faces as she tries to force it down. 

“Packaging,” says Jeremy. 

“By hiring stunning actresses like you,” says Michael, who is wolfing down his own Broghurt. “Also, mine isn't that bad,” he says around a full mouth. 

“I’m supposed to spend the first half of the commercial stalking these big muscly dudes, and trying to steal their Broghurt,” Christine explains. 

“Bangin’. Like the Tricks rabbit, right?” 

“Pretty much.” 

“Silly Christine, yoghurt’s for men!” 

Christine fixes Jeremy with a glare, that lets him know that he probably shouldn't have said that. 

“Then,” Christine continues, “I finally get some, and I have to eat it very sexily. And _then_ , there's this glitter canon, and the bowl turns pink.” 

“Does the price go up?” asks Michael. 

“That part isn't advertised.” 

“Ok. Gnarly.”

“I don't know if I can do this,” says Christine, slamming her hands down on as she leans across the table towards Michael and Jeremy, eyes suddenly bright, with an abrupt change of mood that would be strange from anybody other than Christine. “What if I'm fronting for an evil cooperation? On the other hand, it's yoghurt. How evil can it be? It's not like I'm selling make-up or hair removal products or guns. I've thought this through. Yoghurt has considerably less cultural baggage, and it can't be used to kill people.” 

“That's a decision only you can make,” Michael says. 

“Yoghurt is different from hair removal,” says Jeremy. “It's not as though you’re selling guns. You can't kill people with yoghurt. Even this yoghurt. Also, less cultural baggage.” 

“My thoughts exactly!” Christine leans in even closer, whispering. “I have to do this. My Squip said not to.” 

“Are deactivated Squips smart enough to use reverse psychology?” asks Michael, also whispering. 

“Mine’s a sarcastic ass,” says Jeremy. “So! Sarcasm! That's a thing they can do.” 

“I can't listen to her,” says Christine. “I have to advertise this yoghurt.” 

———————

The next morning finds Jeremy at the breakfast table with Christine, who has been up half the night, practicing the all important task of eating yoghurt sexily. 

"What so you think of this?" she asks. She gazes thoughtfully down at the yoghurt cup, stirs it languidly with her spoon. She pauses, to wink at Jeremy, and lick her lips. With a cry of ecstasy, she flings the spoon across the room, instead opting to lap the yoghurt up with her tongue, all the while staring at Jeremy with what could only be described as bedroom eyes. 

"That's... um..." 

"That’s hot," says Michael, who is on his way to work. “Marry me.” 

Jeremy makes a strangled sound. 

“Platonically,” Michael adds. 

“Metaphorically?” asks Jeremy. Michael just gives him a _look_. Okay, so, stupid question. 

“Thanks Michael,” says Christine, getting up to retrieve her spoon. “Please never say anything like that again.” 

“Got it.” 

Michael pours some water into the electric kettle. Jeremy’s got the coffee on, but Michael will never drink it. He's more of a hot coco kind of guy, especially now that it's getting cold. 

(Hot coco would just about hit the spot, but Jeremy sees Michael pour himself a glass of coke, and the mere idea of switching between a hot beverage and a soda just about sets off Jeremy’s gag reflex.). 

_Ping!_

Everybody checks their phone. It's Jeremy’s. 

"What's happening?" Christine asks. 

"It's my dad," says Jeremy. "He wants to know if I'm having fun with his camera." Jeremy’s voice goes flat, as it does with any mention of the camera. 

"Dude," says Michael. "He asks you that every time he contacts you. One of these days you’re gonna have to bite the bullet and at least try the thing out." 

“I told him I love it and I'm taking lots of good pictures." 

"Honesty!" scolds Christine. 

"Says the girl who’s pretending that Broghurt tastes good." 

"It's a business decision.”

"Whatever.”

Michael takes a big gulp of his coke, pours the instant hot chocolate powder into his other cup, takes another gulp of coke, then pours some water over the hot coco and stirs it. 

(Jeremy has to look away, keenly annoyed that he's wired to experience other people’s flavor and sensory hells.)

Jeremy’s phone pings again. 

It's just dad again. It's just _bla bla bla, I’m proud of you. Bla bla bla, keep taking pictures. Bla bla bla, make sure to leave the house sometimes. Bla bla bla, your aunt Esther wants you to be the photographer at your cousin Sarah’s wedding and she will pay you five hundred dollars._

Hold up. 

Jeremy reads the text again.

_Your aunt Esther wants you to be the photographer ay your cousin Sarah’s wedding. She said she will pay you five hundred dollars._

"Guys," says Jeremy, agitated. "Guys!” With a wild gesture, he all but throws his phone at Michael, who reads the text aloud. 

 

“My aunt Esther wants me to be the photographer at my cousin Sarah's wedding,” Jeremy says. “She’ll pay me five hundred dollars. My dad just texted me about it.”

“So I gathered.” Michael taps the phone.

“Sorry.” Jeremy drums his fingers on the table. “Okay. Okay, so… like, okay. Get this. My aunt Esther wants me to be the photographer at my cousin Sarah's wedding. She’ll pay me five hundred dollars. My dad just texted me about it.”

“Uh-huh,” Michael agrees. 

“What should I do? About this wedding? That my aunt Esther wants me to photograph? That she'll pay me five hundred dollars for?”

"Do you have the first idea how to use the camera? You know, that big, huge, gigantic, expensive object that you have never touched?" 

"I-" Jeremy makes a motion with his hand, like he's pressing an invisible button. Michael tosses his phone back at him. 

"Dude, tell him no."

Jeremy types out his response. 

"What did you tell him?" Michael asks. 

"I-"

"Jeremy,” Christine says, concerned, but very much in tone of somebody who knows what answer to expect

"I told him yes, alright? What am I going to do?"

"Fucking hell Jeremy.” Michael sounds more exasperated than angry, but Jeremy flinches even so.

"What am I going to do?" 

"Text him back and tell him you changed your mind," Michael says. 

“It’s just photography,” says Jeremy. “How hard can it be?” He raises his phone, and snaps a picture of Michael. It's blurry, and shows Michael tugging at his hair, face scrunched up and glowering.

 

“Good job. You caught my ‘what have you gotten yourself into this time’ look perfectly.” 

“You used to believe in me.” Jeremy's voice wavers. 

A sigh. “I _do_ believe in you. So get out your camera and practice. I've got work. This one’s on you, man.” 

Christine gives Jeremy a sympathetic look. "The only thing to do is learn," she says. "You’re welcome to photograph my sexy yoghurt practice."

Michael leaves.

“I'm gonna die. I've gotten through everything the world has thrown at me so far, but this wedding is going to be the thing that kills me.” 

"Maybe it's not too late to turn back," says Christine. 

Jeremy rests his head in his arms. “Here lies Jeremy Heere, killed in a tragic wedding photography accident.” 

Christine giggles, shakes her head, and turns back to her yoghurt. “I'm on your side in this,” she says. “We’ll suffer together for our art.” 

\------------

Christine is right about it not being too late to turn back. Jeremy latches onto that, because it has to be true. It's _not_ too late to turn back. It's never too late to to turn back. Jeremy has plenty of experience making dumb decisions, and fleeing from the consequences like a deer from a forest fire (if the deer had been the one to light the match). Jeremy did, after all, go to college all the way in Vermont, and leave half way through, after making Michael move to another state and give up everything. That’s like a master level in failing to follow through on things. 

 

All things considered, Jeremy ought to just take comfort in the fact that he has the ability to ruin Sarah’s wedding like a pro. Sometimes being able to destroy and sabotage is the only indication Jeremy has that he's not powerless. He could even go all out, agree to go right up to the very last second, and flee the country! That'd be more dramatic than anything Christine has ever done, and Jeremy could do it, because he's the worst and most useless human being in the world. 

Jeremy doesn't _want_ to do it, though. 

He needs to make a decision. 

_"You have to go to the wedding,"_ says the Squip. "Just suck it up. You only other option is to kill yourself.”

Jeremy’s throat tightens. His body is tingling, hot and cold at the same time, hands numb. He covers his ears. He hates that, even all this time, the Squip always lists “kill yourself” as a possible solution to his problems. It doesn't matter if it's something as innocuous as being out of soap, or something big, like this wedding. Jeremy has decided, a thousand times over, that he doesn't want to kill himself. He knows in his heart that he won't. The Squip casually tossing it out there as an option hurts just the same. 

_“Stop being pitiful. The sources of your genetic material already know you suck. Take some mediocre pictures, take their pity money, and use it to buy some friends who won't coddle you."_

That's more than enough of that. The Squip has said enough. Jeremy glares up at him, lips curling inward. He aims his phone camera, and fires. "Take _this_ mediocre picture, you piece of shit."

The Squip disintegrates, and reappears on the windowsill. "And this one," says Jeremy racing at it, camera poised and ready. He takes the picture. The Squip is gone, and then he's back, reclining on the couch like he's posing to be painted. Jeremy takes the photograph. "Jerk," he says. "Stupid. useless, pixilated asshole jerk." 

"I know you are, but what am I?”

"You’re kidding. You’re kidding. That's not even a good comeback. Who the ever loving hell programmed you to say that, and why are you haunting me instead of him? Go get your revenge on somebody who actually hurt you, you fuckwit.”

The Squip smirks. Jeremy takes one more photo, and he's gone. Jeremy looks around and around the room, searching for his technological tormentor. He takes his inhaler. He's out of breath from chasing the Squip around the house, or maybe he's just hyperventilating for funsies. Happens like that sometimes. 

(Back in high school, Jeremy used to call Michael up gasping and barely coherent. He's beyond that though. Very beyond that.)

Jeremy forces a deep breath. He flips through his phone, examining the pictures. Wet and blurred though Jeremy’s vision is, the clearest feature in each picture is the distinct lack of Squip.

Michael would tell Jeremy to forget about the wedding if it's upsetting him this much. Jeremy is not Michael. 

Christine would tell Jeremy to skip going to any event that his Squip wanted him to attend. Jeremy is not Christine. 

It's not that Jeremy thinks obeying his Squip is a good course of action. He just wants to make his own decision, and have it be the same decision he would make if the Squip wasn't a factor. 

So Jeremy fishes out his moleskine. The cover is becoming worn, softer with months of dedicated use. Jeremy brings it to his nose to breathe in the calming leather and paper smell before opening it. He finds a blank page, and draws a line down the middle, splitting it into two columns. At the head of one column he writes "benefits of photographing the wedding". At the head of the other column he writes "drawbacks of photographing the wedding". 

It's a start. Jeremy draws his spirals in the notebook margins, as he tries to arrange his thoughts into words. It takes him about fifteen minutes and approximately a couple billion spirals to begin his lists. 

**Benefits to photographing the wedding**

\- It will make dad happy.  
\- Free food  
\- A way to support Sarah.  
\- I could learn how use the camera.  
\- How hard could it be really?  
\- Five hundred dollars  
\- Could five hundred dollars buy Michael a few days off work???  
\- Michael needs a day off  
\- Money  
\- New skills  
\- Dad  
\- supporting Sarah  
\- learning to use the camera  
\- financially helping Michael  
\- dad wants me to  
-

 

**Drawbacks to photographing the wedding**

\- It's what the squip wants.  
\- I do not know anything about photography.  
\- I'm lying about my photography ability.  
\- I'm not good at learning new things quickly.  
~~\- Everything about me is so terrible.~~  
~~\- Everything about me makes me want to die.~~  
\- Honesty is good.  
-I am a good person.

Having written everything out, Jeremy leans back against the couch. He could sleep. Every nerve and muscle in his body is tired, but he also feels kind of better, until he realizes that he hasn't made a decision, just a list. 

He goes over to the corner where the camera is kept. There is a cobweb between the box and the wall, with a spider dangling off of it. Classy. Jeremy catches the spider in a cup, and lets it out the window. He picks up the box and moves it over to the couch, where he rips it open, revealing film, lenses, and the camera itself. These things he puts to the side, digging down to the bottom of the box for what he really wants. The instruction manual! Jeremy takes it out, and begins to read, pouring as much attention into it as he ever did his college classes. 

\------- 

Days pass. Jeremy reads his camera’s instruction manual from front to back. He reads the instruction manual from front to back. He reads the instruction manual from front to back. He uses all of the note taking and active reading methods that he learned from freshman seminar, highlighting, writing key points in the page margins, and underlining with a gusto. Maybe he can do this. 

Jeremy goes meticulously through the old photos on his phone, the reams and reams of Squip free objects that take up the bulk of his storage space. He searches for any hint in artistry in them, and comes to the conclusion that there is none. That's the first thing he will have to learn. Well, the second. The first thing he needs to learn is how to turn the camera on. He's read, but reading is different than practical application. 

It's a challenge. It's going to be one of the biggest challenges that Jeremy has embarked upon. But, he slowly realizes, he _is_ embarking. The moment he opened up that instruction manual, the decision was made. Jeremy is going to do this.


	8. Chapter 8 - Jeremy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for discussion of alcoholism and abortion.

Jeremy kneels on the floor next to the bed, camera in hand. He's created an idyllic scene upon the comforters, with plastic flowers from Christine, and an assortment of action figures borrowed from Michael. The star, however, is Seymour the rabbit, and he's not cooperating. Hours have passed, and Jeremy is two rolls of film in. All he needs is for Seymour to face forwards, look at the camera, and keep still for a half a second. Instead, he's pooping all over everything, and trying to eat the pillowcase. 

Oh well. The Nikon isn't like the camera on Jeremy’s phone. He can't see the pictures to know if they're good or not. Maybe one of them will be better than he's expecting. 

Also, Jeremy would like to think that he can count on Sarah the Human to be easier to deal with than Seymour the Rabbit. Then again, Sarah is probably going to be preoccupied with getting married. She’ll want to be fully present in the ceremony, and while she's unlikely to bounce around chewing on inappropriate objects, Jeremy wants her to be able to behave naturally instead of just standing still and posing. 

Jeremy is getting deep into the whole photography thing. He's taken photographs of objects, sunsets, rabbits, Christine, and Michael. He's got a routine going, wherein he gets up early and forces himself to go through at least one roll of film, maybe two. Sometimes he does it in the house, and sometimes he goes outside. Sometimes he focuses on a single subject, like he's doing today, and other times he snaps pictures of whatever strikes him as pretty. He's playing with angles, distance, lighting, and lenses. He's downloaded a couple of books, and read a couple dozen webpages. Never let it be said that Jeremy doesn't have an obsessive streak!

At lunch each day, Jeremy walks his rolls of film over to the pharmacy to be developed. He's lucky that the local pharmacy does that! A lot of them only work with digital photography these days, but of course Jeremy’s dad had to be weird and get him something old fashioned. 

Afternoons are for school work. Jeremy does it as quickly as he can, so that he can get back to his photography in the evening. 

Something amazing is happening. 

For the first time since the Squip, Jeremy _can_ do his schoolwork quickly. He doesn't need to get up every fifteen minutes. He reads. He writes. He concentrates. He absorbs. He does what he needs to do to get back to his main project. 

Jeremy’s got a box for the photos that come out badly, or just normal. The ones that he likes, the ones that he thinks show some artistry, he tapes to the walls of the bedroom and the living room. They transform the house. 

He asks Christine if she wants him to put them away. 

“No!” she says. “They’re pretty! I love them!” 

Next, Jeremy asks Michael if he wants him to ditch the photos. 

“Nah man.” Michael smiles one of his easy smiles. “I like having more Jeremy stuff around the house. Makes it look like you live here too.” 

Christine comes home one day with a catalogue of adult ed classes. 

“They're in the same building as the Spirit Zone,” she explains. “You can get a ride with me when I go in for work. Look.” 

Christine opens the catalogue to a dog-eared page near the back, where she's circled a photography and dark room course. “Anyone who wants to can take one course for free every six months! They're ninety dollars after that, if you wanna add on something. They have cooking and salsa dancing. They've even got one on tarot card reading, but that's not what you want, is it? I saw the photography class, and just had to show you. You _are_ going to take it, aren't you?”

“Yeah!” Jeremy agrees. He's getting unaccountably sweaty and red, which is weird, because he's not embarrassed, just…

Excited? Maybe.

Nervous? Very likely. 

Jeremy has hardly interacted with anybody other than Michael and Christine since moving to the Crane Street apartment, other than during those times when he's gone to visit his dad. Before that, his social circle hadn't included anybody outside of the Squip Squad, and even then, he'd been seeing people less as they grew up and moved on. A class with other students is new territory. 

“There's a form in back to fill out,” Christine says. “Also, we've gotta send them a utility bill as proof of residence. Just do that, and you’re in.” 

“I'm in!” Jeremy repeats. 

—————

Tuesdays are Michael’s favorite day, because they're one of the two days a week that he gets off from Best Buy to work at the LGBT center. He also gets to sleep in, because his job there goes from noon until seven o’clock. Considering his habit of staying up all night, Tuesdays are the closest that Michael comes to well-rested. 

On this particular Tuesday, Michael has the bedroom. Jeremy is lying on the couch, taking some pictures of the ceiling. He's hung this crystal thing on the window, to get prisms of rainbow light around the room, and he's trying to capture that. It's art! When Michael comes out, he pauses at the end of the couch, standing over Jeremy. 

“You look cute, man.” 

“Huh?” 

“You’ve got your tongue stuck half out of your mouth. It's cute.” 

Jeremy pulls his tongue back into his mouth. From his current angle, Michael’s face looms above him. His eyes are reddish at the whites, but soft. He's wearing his old hoodie. It's worn in some places, darker than it should be at the sleeves. He has to keep it open these days. Michael’s freshman fifteen was more like a freshman twenty-five. Usually Jeremy doesn't notice, because he's so used to how Michael looks now, but when he tries to fit into clothes from high school, it's immediately evident. 

(It's not a bad look on Michael. The words “warm” and “solid” come to mind, where they really shouldn't, because by dropping out of school and abandoning Michael, Jeremy forever forfeited the right to wax poetic about Michael’s physical attributes, even in the privacy of his own mind. Nonetheless, Michael has never ceased to be appealing.)

Michael leans over Jeremy where he lays, putting his hands on his shoulders.

 _Kiss me_ , Jeremy thinks. It's unforgivably stupid, because it's not going to happen.

“You’re growing a beard,” Michael observes. Jeremy runs his hand over it. It's not really a _beard_ beard. He's got a few days stubble going, but calling it a beard is just being over dramatic. Also, maybe they _are_ talking about each other’s physical appearance after all? Could that really be a thing that they are doing? 

“It's scruffy, but a nice scruffy,” Michael continues. 

Holy hell. 

“You’re fat,” Jeremy blurts out. “Good fat!” he hastens to add. 

Michael bursts out laughing. He laughs so hard that he's doubling over. 

“What?” Jeremy asks, sitting up. “I was just saying…” 

“You mean with a ph, right?” Michael says, still wheezing with laughter. “Like phat.” 

(“It's not 1999,” Jeremy _doesn't_ say. In Michael’s world, it's always going to be 1999.)

“I need you for a picture,” Jeremy says. He's been saying that a lot. Something in the back of his mind warns him that the first three words are the ones he means the most. How long has it been since he was last able to tell Michael, with impunity, that he needed him? 

“Yeah, of course.” 

Jeremy moves Michael over to the wall, then goes to the window to adjust the crystal, so that the rainbow falls over Michael's face. Of course, as soon as Jeremy lets go, the angle is lost, and the prism moves back to the ceiling. 

“Gay photo shoot?” Michael asks. 

“Gay photo shoot. I'm gonna get Christine to help. I don't _think_ she has an audition today.” 

Jeremy is right. Christine does not have an audition. She's groggy and disheveled coming out of her bedroom, but she agrees to join the project. It takes some finagling on Christine's part, but they get the crystal positioned right, so that the rainbow falls where Jeremy wants it to. 

“I've seen photo sets where people do this with cats,” says Christine. “They're very atmospheric.” 

“They're gay,” says Michael. 

“That too.” 

As they talk, Jeremy snaps his pictures, an endeavor which Michael helps with by posing, first with a peace sign, then with his tongue out and his hand forming an L shape on his forehead. Jeremy would never expect anything less from him. 

They finish up after Jeremy runs out of film. 

“Was that what you wanted?” Michael asks. 

“Exactly what I wanted. Thank you.” 

—————

Jeremy preempts his first photography class with a long shower. He washes his hair and face, and then he lets the hot water run over him. 

_’There's a zit on your forehead,’_ says a voice. _‘How badly have you messed up your life that you’re twenty-three and still have acne?’_

At first Jeremy thinks it's the Squip, but the timbre isn't quite right, and Jeremy’s arch nemesis is nowhere to be found. 

“It's me,” Jeremy whispers. “I'm bitching myself out because I'm nervous, but I don't have to. Nobody else cares about my zits.” 

He gets out of the shower, dries off, and sprays some cologne. 

_’You idiot, you're going to a photography class, not on a date.’_

Again, the voice isn't the Squip. Just Jeremy’s own mind, being exceptionally Squip-like. And when it comes down to it, it's his own choice whether or not he wears cologne. He's let himself get kinda grimy, always being at home. This is an event 

Jeremy gets a razor out of the medicine cabinet to shave. He pauses, and puts it down. Michael seems to like it when he doesn't. Jeremy tries to imagine himself with a lush, long beard, like his dad. Okay, so that's a lot more facial hair than he needs or wants. He makes a face at himself in the mirror. He can probably get away with one more day without shaving, but no more. He’ll do that. 

Christine drives him to his class a while after he finishes dressing. It's in a room with too-small chairs that might’ve been stolen from a local primary school, and thirteen other people. Darkroom practice, which is the part Jeremy is most excited for, will start after the first two weeks. 

Of the thirteen people, six look decidedly older than Jeremy, and one looks like a sixth grader. None of them are staring at Jeremy, even as he shifts in his seat, and fiddles with the edges of his cardigan. They are all staring at the instructor, who is showing slides of her own photos on the smart board, and listing off which materials they’ll need to buy, and which will be provided. It's mostly stuff like a film camera. Jeremy has that! There are a limited number that can be lent out to those who don't. 

During break, the old lady seated next to Jeremy introduces herself. Her name is Agnes, and she has five grandkids. She shows Jeremy pictures! Her oldest grandson is the same age as Jeremy. She'd like to be able to take professional photos of them, like the ones they do at Walmart. 

At the end of the class, one of the guys compliments Jeremy on his camera. It's not like high school, where people figured out right from the get go that Jeremy was a geek who needed to be either avoided or mocked. It's also different from those first few weeks of college, when everybody was in such a rush to make friends (any friends!), that they'd temporarily attach themselves to whoever they happened to meet, just to avoid being alone. 

Jeremy’s final verdict of Photography Class and its inhabitants is that it's very Adult and not especially scary. Photography class is something that he can live with. Maybe it's something that he can look forward to. 

—————

In the time between taking the photos and developing them, there's always the fear that something Jeremy doesn't want will show up in one. That fear is at it’s worst when Jeremy develops his first batch, and it wanes with each subsequent batch of Squip-free pictures. The Squip isn't real. Jeremy learned that through his smartphone pictures, and the photos he takes with his fancy camera support that knowledge. 

Jeremy isn't taking as many pictures with his phone these days. He allows himself to do it when he needs to, but surrounded by pictures as he is, he's gaining confidence in his reality. He's not throwing his belongings away, either. It's been weeks since he did that. 

But Jeremy needs inspiration. He's done just about all he can, taking pictures of stuff around the house, and around town. His camera is an old model. Therefore, it stands to reason that the best course of action is look at some other pictures taken with older cameras— not super old, like from the Victorian era or whatever. Just old. Stuff from Jeremy’s own childhood. 

Jeremy picks a day, and takes the train home to visit his dad. On the train, he fortifies himself for what he's about to do. There's a drawer in the living room with photo albums. Jeremy’s seen them before, but not for a long time. There are pictures of his mom and dad’s wedding, and photos of Jeremy as a baby. There are photos following Jeremy’s childhood all the way up through high school. This is what Jeremy is going to have to look through. 

Jeremy’s dad is waiting at the train station to drive Jeremy back to the house. Jeremy hands him an envelope of pictures before he can start the car engine. 

“This is what I've been doing with the camera.” The words come out more breathlessly than Jeremy wants them to. As his dad opens the envelope and flips through the photos, Jeremy watches him closely for any reaction. Jeremy’s dad’s smile makes the wrinkles show at the edge of his eyes. It's wide and genuine. 

“I'm proud of you, son.” 

Jeremy’s got nothing to say to that. He bites his tongue, because if he lets himself speak, it's going to come out as a heartfelt monologue about how he's sorry (he's always sorry for something!) and he sucks. Even if he hates himself way less than usual right now, praise always sits too heavily on his shoulders, and his first urge is to defend himself against it. Better to remain quiet. 

On the drive home, Jeremy’s dad fills Jeremy in on his life. Work is going fine! He saw a cat the other day! In the winter, you have to be careful, because sometimes stray cats like to sleep on the tires of your car. You should always check your tires for cats. That is a fatherly life lesson. Furthermore, Jeremy’s dad bought a new pair of reading glasses, and is trying to eat more fruit. 

It's easy to forget how mundane most people's lives are, Jeremy’s dad included. Some people don't have to deal with robot possessed rats and then figure out how to incorporate what they learn from the experience into their sense of self. Some people go to work, worry about stray cats, eat fruit, and replace old glasses as their eyesight grows weaker. 

“I'll be careful of stray cats,” Jeremy promises his dad. He doesn't drive, but the point stands. 

“That's my boy.” 

They stop to get pizza for lunch, dad’s treat. Film and getting film developed is taking up most of Jeremy’s money these days, so the food is welcome. 

(Jeremy’s money comes from rationing out the housing portion of his student loans, and his dad paypaling him a monthly allowance. 

“You should be ashamed of that at your age,” says the voice, which is not the Squip, just Jeremy thinking Squip-like thoughts. 

“He's only doing it because he feels guilty that mom didn't give you vaccines as a kid,” the voice continues. Jeremy shakes his head to clear it.)

At home, Jeremy watches a couple episodes of This Old House with his father. They put on a movie after, and Jeremy sits through it, as if the drawer with all the photo albums isn't calling his name. He doesn't want to seem like he's coming over with any motive beyond keeping his beloved father company. 

The photo albums aren't a big deal, but they're kinda a big deal. Nobody looks at them anymore since mom left. At least that's what Jeremy thinks, until it's almost time to go, and he busts open the drawer to find a stack of newer pictures at the top. They aren't nicely arranged the way the old ones are, but without looking to closely, Jeremy catches a glimpse of one that shows him and Michael waving goodbye from their dorm room in Burlington, cheesey grins painted upon their faces, like maybe everything wouldn't be a disaster. 

“I'm taking these,” Jeremy tells his father. “I mean, the albums, and the loose pictures, and all of it.” 

“Are you sure you want to do that?” 

Jeremy doesn't answer. He stands there with his mouth open, like the genius he is. 

(“Catching flies,” his mom would've said.)

“Those books hold a lot of memories,” Jeremy’s dad continues. He comes over to Jeremy, covering Jeremy’s hand, which is covering the stack of albums. “You seem to be doing really well these days.” 

Jeremy looks away. He can't blame his dad for being like this. A lot of bad stuff has gone down in the Heere family, between Jeremy and his mom. Even the stuff that felt okay when it happened has since had time to ripen and become all the more crappy. It's a ton to cope with, and Jeremy isn't much of a coper. Ever since the Squip, Jeremy has shown himself, time and time again, to be somebody who loses his shit over small setbacks. And sure, he always says that he’ll handle things, and he’ll be fine this time, but historically that just hasn't been the case. 

“I need to look at them,” Jeremy says. 

“Would you rather look at them here, with me?” 

Jeremy shakes his head. Something inside him retreats. “Christine and Michael will look at the, with me.” 

His dad lets out a slow breath, relenting. “Michael might be interested in seeing some of these. He's part of the family!” He smiles a forced smile. 

“I’ll bring them back,” Jeremy promises. “When I’m done. I know you’ll want them.” 

“They’re your history!” Jeremy’s father is all forced joviality, seeing as there's no going back. “You should keep them.” 

“Oh. Okay then.” 

There are twelve photo albums in total, too many for Jeremy to carry in his arms. His dad goes to the attic, to get a bag for him. The one he comes back with dredges up almost as many memories as the photos are bound to. 

“Boyf?” Jeremy reads, mouth gone dry. 

“I suppose that's one of those ‘retro’ 2019 bands!” Jeremy’s father says, finger quotes around the word _retro_. “Kids these days have never heard of the Backstreet Boyfs, I'll tell you what.” 

“…dad.”

“The Hardy Boyfs.” 

“I think that's a series of books.” 

“How does it feel to be old?” 

Jeremy shrugs, grimacing. He loves his dad, but sometimes he's too much. This is never more true than when he's going on and on about things that he would understand if only he hadn't missed a significant part of Jeremy’s life. 

(But it's okay. It's fine. It's not Jeremy’s dad's _fault_ that he'd been too depressed to get dressed and pay attention.)

“Just let me pack these things up, and we can go. I wanna get to the train station before peak.” 

The drive back to the train station is much like the drive there. Jeremy’s dad talks about home improvement. He'd like to buy a new doorknob to replace the one in the kitchen. Maybe, if he's brave, he’ll buy some tools and do it himself. He just might! He's a man, after all. Erica Mell has offered to come by and help, if he gets overwhelmed. 

“I'll see you later!” Jeremy says, when they arrive. He gives his dad a hug. Getting out of the car, he shoulders his bag. It's so heavy that he's afraid the old canvas might tear, but it holds up for the train ride and the walk back to the Crane Street house. 

—————

Later that night, Jeremy, Christine, and Michael sit in a circle on the living room floor, the pile of photo albums between them. It's got a witchy-freaks do a scary ceremony to raise the dead in a teen movie from the 90’s aesthetic, only without the candles, and hopefully without the thrilling conclusion where the ghosts of the past rise up and kill them each one by one. It's bizarre, though. They're holding a hands and shit, and Jeremy’s hands are so fucking sweaty. Michael and Christine must be having a blast with this new bullshit. 

“You ready for this?” Michael asks. 

“No.” 

“Okay, cool.” Michael starts to get up. 

“Wait.” Jeremy rolls out his shoulders, like somebody limbering up for a fight. “Okay, let's do this.” 

“Sure,” Michael agrees. “But I think we need to be high for this one. Excluding Christine, of course.” 

Christine gives Michael a wink and an OK sign, and he goes off to get the goods. 

“Feeling jittery, huh?” Christine asks.

“What gives you that idea?” 

Christine lets go of Jeremy’s hand, wiping the moisture off on her skirt. “Just a hunch.”

Michael comes back with the clay pipe he uses to smoke weed. He rejoins Jeremy and Christine on the floor, forming the circle anew. He lights up, and offers Jeremy the first hit. It's been a while since Jeremy did this. Once upon a time, he was so used to it that he didn't even notice if the smoke made his asthma worse. Now, it stings the back of his throat, but it's worth it. 

Christine coughs. The fact that Michael would even suggest doing this in her airspace just goes to show the albums are a big deal to him too. 

“Let's do this.” Jeremy cracks his knuckles. He throws open the cover of the first album, bracing himself as if a demon might come leaping out of it. 

There, on a front page, is a photo of Jeremy’s mom and dad, smiling from the bleachers of a Middleborough Rams football game, clad in Middleborough blue and gold. Jeremy’s mother has braces, and hair down to her waist. Her smile is so big that her eyes are shut in little sideways crescent moons. Jeremy’s dad is clean shaven and pudgy, with a sheepish look and an arm around his mom’s waist. He's got more hair than Jeremy has ever seen on him. 

Wordlessly, Jeremy turns to the next page. It's a picture of the Middleborough show chorus. In the back, Jeremy can just make out his mother's face. He points her out to Christine and Michael.

“That's where you get your singing ability,” Christine says. 

Jeremy shrugs. “It's Middleborough show chorus. They let anybody in. You see that guy down in the middle?” 

“You mean the _only_ dude in the picture?” 

“It's Mr. Reyes.” 

Christine covers her mouth. 

“He was was in my mom's grade.” 

“Mr. Reyes!” Christine laughs. “Mr. Reyes! Just look at that purple shirt. I'm going to take a picture of the picture and send it to him.” 

Michael raises his eyebrow at Christine. “Seriously? You have his phone number?” 

“E-mail. He directed all of my early plays, and we briefly shared a telepathic link. Of course we keep in touch. I want to make sure he knows when I make my Broadway debut.” 

“But do you have his phone number?” 

“ _No_ ”

“I wanna prank call him and pretend to be the ghost of all the innocent hot pockets he's vored.” 

Christine bumps her shoulder against Michael. 

“Could we leave the vore jokes in 2018?” Jeremy asks, knowing full well that Michael only likes them by virtue of them being from 2018. He never said stuff like that back when it was what everybody was saying. 

Jeremy turns the page in the photo album. Most of it is pictures of mom. There are about a dozen mom pics for every dad pic. 

“Guess we know who was holding the camera,” Michael says. 

“Oh god, do you think dad was trying to relate to me by giving me this camera, and it went over my head?” 

“Stranger things have happened.” 

Flipping through the pages, Jeremy comes to one with a name scribbled at the bottom. 

_David, May 4th 1997._

“Who’s that?” Christine asks. “There's a character named David in Newsies. He's significantly different between the—”

“Dead brother.” 

Christine closes her mouth abruptly. 

“Fetus brother. Wait. No. Does that make me sound like a pro-lifer or something? I'm not. Let me start again. You know the show drunk history?” 

Christine nods, and Jeremy feels a pang of guilt for how solemn he's made her. 

“When my mom started calling me, like at the start of college— Vermont college, I mean. When my mom started calling me at the start of— Could I start again?

Christine nods. 

“When my mom started calling me in college, she did this thing where she'd be drunk and tell me about my family history, but only the bad parts. So she got pregnant senior year of high school, went to the hospital, and did something about it, and she was hammered when she told me, so she talked about it like it was some… uh. Bad. I mean. Not good. Like, not a… uh… highlight of her high school ex— her high school time. Awful. Ish.” 

“Whether or not it's an awful thing tends to depend on whether or not the woman feels comfortable with their choice, either way,” Christine says. 

“I-I don't th— I don't th— I—. Okay, so I'm pretty… uh.” Jeremy licks his lips. “I’m pretty sure she never made a decision that she felt comfortable with in her life. She didn't..uh… want me? I mean, she said she didn't want a kid, but she also didn't want to be the kind of woman who didn't have a kid, so…” Jeremy gives a humorless laugh. “I was planned, but like the way you plan for a… math final? Funeral? Like… like something you gotta have even if it ruins your life.”

As Jeremy has been talking, he's been mindlessly turning the pages in the photo album. He’s reached the last page, which shows a man and a woman’s hands, with gold engagement rings on their fingers. 

“I like the composition of this one,” Michael says. “That's why we’re looking at these, right? To give you ideas. I like how this picture shows hands instead of faces.” He passes Jeremy the pipe, so he can take a hit. 

“Do you want to take a break?” Christine asks. 

Jeremy shakes his head. “I really appreciate that you two are here. This is my thing, and you’re awesome for going along with it.” 

“Hella awesome,” Michael agrees, but there’s a softness about his smile, like if Jeremy were to hug him right now, he'd hug back.

Jeremy breaks into the next album. This one starts with more pictures of his parents, still primarily his mother. 

“Are you enjoying late 90’s fashions?” Jeremy asks, to lighten the mood. 

“I wish butterfly clips were still a thing,” says Christine. “I would wear them.” 

“Me too,” says Michael. 

“Excellent! Let's wear them.” 

Christine and Michael reach across Jeremy to high five, and Jeremy’s chest loosens just a tiny bit. 

It's a good thing, because they're coming up on Jeremy’s parents’ wedding pictures. 

“She looks happy,” Jeremy says, pointing to his mom. “They both do. Weird, right?” 

“Weird,” Michael agrees. The next few pictures show Jeremy’s mother drinking champagne at the wedding. Her smile becomes looser and more lopsided. “Now there's the Mrs. Heere that I remember,” says Michael. 

“That's a shitty thing to say about somebody’s wedding picture.” 

“She had a problems. That's no one’s fault, but you got the worst of it, man.” 

Together, they make their way through the rest of the album, and onto the next. Jeremy’s baby pictures are much fawned over, even the wrinkly newborn ones where he looks more alien than human. Baby Jeremy covered in spaghetti sauce, and toddler Jeremy dunking his head in the kiddy pool, because he was afraid to put his body inside, are also fan favorites. 

Once Jeremy hits preschool, Michael begins to appear in almost as many photos as Jeremy himself. There's Jeremy playing with his Fischer Price vacuum cleaner, his face alight with five-year-old derp, while Michael looks on, tiny and bemused. Michael always had been opposed to the vacuum cleaner, thinking that Jeremy’s parents were trying to trick him into doing chores. There's a kindergarten sleepover picture, with Michael and Jeremy sitting on either side of Jeremy’s father, who is reading aloud to them from _the Hungry Little Caterpillar_. Michael is wearing his Spider-Man pajamas, and Jeremy is clutching Sharky, a fluffy toy shark who had been his constant companion until he was around nine years old. 

“You two were adorable,” says Christine. 

“Yeah. I—” Jeremy runs his hand down his face, as if he can rub the redness out of it. “I can't believe you weren't there. I feel like I've known you forever, and you should be in these pictures next to Michael.” 

“Aww, thanks. I feel like I've known you forever, too!” 

It takes them another hour of looking through the photos to reach middle school. There are lots of pictures of Jeremy and Michael to be found, and Jeremy always looks happy. Pictures aren't supposed to lie, but Jeremy wasn't happy in middle school. He peers closer, trying to find the misery, and spots it in the way he's usually _behind_ Michael, the stiffness in his posture, and they strange ways he positions his hands, in a vein attempt to hide his burgeoning acne. In family pictures he scowls as moody teenagers are wont to do. Could be there was more to it than that. 

Michael, in contrast, is full of funny faces, and cheesy poses. Michael is grinning down at the photos now. 

“We were such dorks,” Michael says. “Such a _spectacular_ pair of dorks.” The last album finished, Michael closes the book. “Good trip down memory lane, my dude.”

“Got a couple more,” Jeremy says, but his voice comes out rushed and quiet. 

“Huh?” 

“More,” Jeremy says, louder this time. He leans over to the backpack. Michael hasn't commented on what it says, and Jeremy isn't about to either. He takes the loose pictures out of the side pocket. 

There are a lot less of these. When Jeremy’s mom left, she took with her a lot of Jeremy’s dad’s desire to do… well, anything. Wordlessly, Jeremy hands the picture over to Michael. There's one of him in the hospital after the Squip, newly awake from his coma, but pale and blank-faced, curled up at Michael’s side. Why would his dad even take this picture? Jeremy looks like a zombie, and Michael looks drawn and miserable, even as he makes a thumbs-up sign at the camera. 

“You were circling the drain there for a while,” Michael says, answering the question that Jeremy didn't want to ask. It's depressing, that his dad would take a picture of him looking like _that_ to celebrate the fact that, hey, at least he was alive. 

The next ten pictures aren't such a drag. They show Jeremy, Christine, and Michael, getting ready to go to prom. 

“Finally somebody good looking,” Jeremy jokes, pointing to Christine, as if that’ll ease the awkwardness of the hospital photos, or the awkwardness of these photos, for that matter. There's one in particular, with Jeremy in the center, and Christine and Michael each kissing one side of his face, that makes him ache. 

Jeremy’s dad had been good about the whole polyamory thing, while it lasted. At that point, he'd been worried enough about Jeremy’s mental health that Jeremy could've dated ten people, no people, the sun, the sky, or a desk lamp, and his dad would've allowed him to get away with it, as long as he seemed happy. 

The last photo is the one of Jeremy and Michael in their dorm room. Michael looks at it for half a second, and hands it and the rest of the pile back to Jeremy as if they are burning his fingers. He stands up. 

_’He's leaving,’_ Jeremy thinks. 

Michael does not leave. 

“We should take a family picture,” Michael suggests. 

“Now?” 

“Yep. Not with your hipster camera. This is a selfie kinda operation. We gotta get all three of us.” 

“I'm in,” says Christine. 

And so, Jeremy, Michael, and Christine go to the couch. They squeeze in close together, and Michael stretches out his arm to take the photos. He takes eight of them, in which he and Christine fight to outdo each other with weird poses and expressions, and Jeremy smiles at the center. 

Two days later, one of the photos appears in a frame on the end table next to the couch. 

The day after of that, Jeremy comes out of the bedroom in the morning to find Christine and Michael sitting together, with one of the albums open between them. They close the album and cease their whispered conversation when they catch Jeremy listening in the doorway.


	9. Chapter 9 - Christine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings - discussion of bullying, ableism, mentions of an ableist slur

As November draws to a close, the first performance of the Spirit Zone’s production of Little Women is looming close. With great difficulty, Christine has let the kids choose what creative direction to take the show in. Christine has her own ideas, but so did Mr. Reyes, and Christine had _majorly_ resented the addition of zombies into all her beloved classics. Christine refuses to be like her hot pocket guzzling former teacher, and instead takes on the role of a permissive and endlessly supportive adviser. 

It's not always easy. The kids want to know why there has to be blocking. Can't they just move however their intuition tells them their characters would be moving? The kids also want to know if professor Bhaer can be played by an actual bear. They’re super into that idea. 

(The answer to the first question is that they need blocking because it's important to take into consideration how the audience will view the stage, and because the sci-tech kid doing the lighting needs to know where the actors are going to be standing at any given point. The answer to the second question is yes, though the part of Christine that's anal about wanting things to be close to their source material is dying a little inside. Like, she's studied enough Shakespeare by now to know that her arguments with Mr. Reyes, about how the bard wouldn't want his plays bizarrely rewritten, were false and misinformed, but still. It's kinda like how she can't read AU fan fiction, because she’ll see a description that starts out “Evan Hansen is a Russian ballet dancer” and her brain will start screaming at her like No! He! Is! Not! At any rate, Bhaer the Bear ends up being a thing,)

Christine and the kids are at the point in their production where posters are a serious concern. As promised, Christine is leaving the bulk of that task on Ashley’s young shoulders, and pointedly ignoring the ire with which Ashley constantly tries to assert herself as being more capable than her. 

“I have a friend who can take photos of you,” Christine tells her cast one evening. They've just finished a faster than usual run through of act one, and they're sitting on the stage, discussing the very important issue of how to advertise their masterpiece. Tina is in full costume, although dress rehearsals have yet to start. Tina’s mother took all this time sewing her an 18th century gown, and Tina couldn't wait to become her character. Kit, who used to always have their notebook open and something else to do, is intent on Christine. Hung has her head on Kit’s shoulder. Something is happening between those two. Thomas, Adib, and Molly are all listening to Christine or goofing off to various degrees. 

Ashley is glaring. 

“You’ll still have full creative control,” Christine tells the girl, who seems to want to set herself up as Christine’s rival. “But professional pictures might be nice.” 

(Jeremy is nowhere near professional, but Christine thinks he can play the part.)

“I don't see how things could turn out worse than last time,” says Ashley. “I'm not an artist. I'm just trying to make sure _you_ don't mess up.” 

“Okay then!” Christine forces brightness. “I'll get my friend to take the pictures, and leave the rest to you.” 

The remainder of the meeting is spent discussing ticket prices, word of mouth, where to put the posters once they're made. This devolves into a discussion of Bhaer the Bear, who is being played by a puppet Molly found at IKEA. The kids love Bhaer the Bear with an ironic intensity that characterizes high schoolers. When he's not onstage, being manned by Kit (who rather enjoys the novelty of playing their own love interest), he's seated in a shrine that the kids have built him backstage. There, he receives offerings of coins and sweets. _For luck_ the kids say, and maybe he _is_ the reason things are going more smoothly. 

Class does not end late today. Christine has set an alarm on her phone, to make sure her charges get let out on time. 

Tina and Molly hang behind. At first, Christine isn't sure why, and continues to clean up the theatre, humming as if they aren't there. 

“Miss Canigula?” Molly says, to get her attention. Christine puts down her things, and faces the girls. 

“I'm sorry Ashley’s bullying you,” says Tina. 

It catches Christine off guard. In all of her tense interactions with Ashley, the word _bullying_ has never crossed Christine's mind. Yet here is Tina, a certified oddball, just like Christine herself has always been, standing there in her unnecessary period costume, throwing a new label at Christine and Ashley’s uncomfortable classroom dynamic. 

“Thanks,” Christine says, but her brain is still processing, and something feels off. 

“You’re a really good instructor!” Molly continues. “You know like _everything_ about musicals, and you always listen to all our ideas, and—”

“And Ashley’s a bitch,” Tina finishes. 

“Has she done anything to you?” Christine asks. Tina doesn't answer, but Christine can infer. “Ashley isn't bullying me. She can't. It's my job to take care of all of you while you’re in here. I'm not saying that she's behaving in a way that's kind, or a way that's appropriate, but it's my job to deal with her, and make sure she gets the best possible outcome from this experience. Is she bullying you?” 

“She says I'm weird.” 

“It's good to be weird!” Christine encourages, and though she's smiling, she knows well enough from watching Michael and Jeremy that she's treading on shaky ground. “I, myself, am super weird and super proud of it.” Christine bows, throwing her hands up in the air, which just goes to show how weird she is. But no more of that right now. She clears her throat, forcing a mask of seriousness. “The problem,” she says, “is when people take issue with certain kinds of weirdness, weaponize them, and turn it against you. I know it's not useful to say that kids are just like that, especially considering you two are kids, and you’re _not_ like that, so it's not verifiably true. Is it helpful to say that I think you’ll find your place? ‘Cause I really, really think that.” 

“Have you?” asks Molly. It's a big question. 

“For now! It’s an ongoing process. I'm happy. I still haven't given up on making my Broadway debut, or writing a speech that changes the face of global politics, or going to France and becoming an acrobat, though admittedly I only thought of that lady one just now. The point is, I have a lot of things I still want to do, but fitting in isn't one of my worries anymore, and it hasn't been for a long time.” 

The girls nod, but Christine can tell that she needs to say more, and she can't under any circumstances make it about herself. 

“Tina,” she says to the first girl, “You have so much enthusiasm and drive. The world of theatre is full of a lot of passion and excitement, but also some of the biggest egos you’ll ever meet. Don't let that get you down. A lot of it’s bluster and show anyway.

“And Molly,” Christine turns to the second, “I can tell that you are an incredibly discerning young woman of impeccable taste. You’re looking places that a lot of people forget about to find the best that the stage has to offer. One of these days, you’re going to have to hit me up with some of your show recommendations.”

“Oh,” says Molly, “I have tons of those.” 

“It's really cool that the two of you have made friends.”

“I guess playing sisters is making us feel like family.” 

“I know how that goes,” Christine says, because she does. One of the things she's struggled with most in theatre is how a cast can be so family-like while a show is running, only to break up when the show is over. But, since Tina and Molly are right in the middle of the happy part of that process, Christine sees no point in mentioning the sad part. 

“We’d better go now,” says Molly. 

The girls wave goodbye, and Christine goes back to the task of cleaning up the theatre. Her belongings are spread all over the room. They always are by the end of class. Christine has no idea how it happens. 

On the way home, Christine considers her conversations with the girls. Is she being all that these kids need? That hadn't been her first consideration when she took the job. She'd been thinking, instead, that it would let her get paid to act and be in an auditorium. It would keep her from having to sell her soul to retail, the way Michael had.

Christine's place at the Spirit Zone can not be just about pursuing her own interests, however. It's gotta be about empowering young people. She's going to have to step up her game, and not even because her game isn't already good. It's just that this game doesn't have a top level. No matter what she does, there's always going to be room to be better, and the kids she's working with deserve the best. 

———————-

Christine talks it over with Jeremy a few nights later, driving him to the theatre to take cast photos. 

“I feel like some of the girls peered into my soul and learned that I used to get made fun of in middle school,” Christine says. “And I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'd rather they think I'm a super human who has every aspect of her life put together.” 

“Yeah,” says Jeremy, “but then you’d be giving them the message that they should also grow up to be super humans who have _their_ lives together. You know what makes me feel better about my life?” 

“What?” 

“Knowing that my dad went through a period of being shit at everything when he was older than I am now, and he came through it. He went from not being able to put on pants, to handling his own life, and helping me with mine. Makes me think that if he can overcome his demons, so can I, even if I'm not all the way there yet.” 

“Oh!” Christine says. Sometimes Jeremy surprises her, and she needs a moment to figure out how to react to what he's said. “I like that,” she decides. “I'm going to keep your dad in mind next time I go through a rough patch. My dads have always had things under control. Dad-Ryan told me he was kinda struggling before he transitioned, but that was before I was born. I don't have any examples of parental breakdowns to draw from.” 

“My dad loves you. You can adopt him as your reformed screw up relative.” 

“I appreciate it! I don't want to be the reformed screw up in anybody else’s life, though. When I was in fourth grade, my homeroom teacher broke her foot during class. One of the boys was trying to show her the valentines cards he'd made, and he stepped on it accidentally. Anyway, she was very calm about it, but it was still scary. Imagine how much scarier it must be to think your drama instructor is being bullied by the kid who is bullying you. That gives her so much power!”

Jeremy shrugs. “You can't always control what other people think. If you try, you’ll drive yourself crazy.” 

“That's true.”

They arrive at the Spirit Zone. The back of Christine’s car is filled with props that she's thrifted and borrowed, and costumes she's rented, for the kids who didn't want to make their own. Jeremy helps her carry the boxes inside and get things set up. 

“Did the Spirit Zone pay for all of this?” Jeremy asked. 

Christine shrugs, a sheepish smile on her face. “I might’ve paid out of pocket for some of it. I just want the kids to have a great show.”

“You’re getting into this whole mentor thing.” 

“I am! And it's making me realize I never want to have children, or if I do, I want to wait until I'm at least forty-five.” 

“What?” 

“If I care this much when they aren't even mine, imagine what'd be like if I had a baby. It'd make everything harder than it already is.” 

“I don't know if I want children,” Jeremy says. “I haven't been with anyone since Michael, so it's not likely it comes up. Michael would be good with kids.” 

Christine shrugs. “You know why he does secretarial work at the LGBT center instead of working with the clients directly?” 

Jeremy shakes his head. 

“Some kid who goes there said he felt stupid, and Michael launched into a rant about how it's okay to be stupid and why stupid people deserve rights and respect. I'm ninety percent sure he was trying to make a point about the false value that society puts on very specific types of intelligence, but he also, by all reports, called the kid like nine variations on stupid and almost got fired.” 

“…oh,” says Jeremy. He takes a minute to think that over. “I still think Michael would be a great father.”

Christine hums. “I love Michael.” 

“Me too. I mean— uh…”

Christine gets it. Loving Michael is a sentiment that Jeremy can't casually repeat. Jeremy and Michael’s relationship is mad complicated. Christine hopes it can become less complicated someday. 

“No worries,” Christine says. “You can love him as much as you want in my company, and I'll never breathe a word.”

What Christine doesn't say is that she might have other plans. 

Before long, the prop boxes are unpacked. Christine's Little Women production still has a long way to go and some art students to borrow before it can be called anywhere close to having a set, but the things she's brought create an atmosphere. There's a quill pen for Kit as Jo to write with, and an old wooden post box to place between the March and Laurence house. There's a dressing room style curtain for Laurie and Jo to hide behind for their first onstage meeting, and an antique quilt to cover Beth’s deathbed. 

The next order of business is to get the costumes unpacked and catalogued. The company sent them along with an inventory form. Christine has Jeremy check things off by number, while Christine gets them hung up in order. 

“I remember wearing costumes like this,” Jeremy says. 

“I remember you wearing costumes like this!” Christine echoes. She also remembers how Jeremy didn't stutter on stage like he did in real life, unless they were doing improv. She remembers Jeremy not drinking at cast parties, because she didn't, and how that made everything more comfortable. She wonders if the kids she's directing will have a cast party, and if they’ll get into trouble at it. 

Before Christine and Jeremy are completely ready, the kids start filtering in, starting with Hung, who marches straight past Jeremy and Christine to place a plastic bracelet at the alter of Bhaer the Bear, who is waiting expectantly backstage. 

Tina and Molly come in together, bickering about whether or not Les Miserables needs _another_ revival. It's much more friendly than their bickering of old, if the jokes about Javert introducing himself every five minutes are any indication. Thomas goes right for the costumes as soon as gets through the door, and Adib joins them. Ashley saunters in late and sits in the back, like she's living her life as the star of some kind of unfortunate Mean Girls parody. 

Christine claps her hands to get everybody’s attention. “Guys!” she calls out. “The costumes are here! Let's try them on!”

A joyful kind of chaos ensues, with Christine distributing the catalogued costumes to the kids, who scatter to the appropriate places to change into them. Hung’s costume is a little long, and Adib’s is a little loose. The cut Molly’s might be anachronistic, and the wig Christine picked out for pre-haircut Jo gets passed around and tried on by everybody, including Bhaer the Bear, before finding its way to Kit’s head. Stage make-up practice happens, and selfies abound. 

They get the stage arranged for their photo shoot, and after some discussion, each cast member gets to try out three different poses that they feel embody their character. It's nice to see Jeremy get into it. As with his acting days of old, Jeremy is super absorbed in his task, and in such a deep state of concentration that he forgets to stutter. After the individual shots are taken, the kids start in on a run through of the show, which Jeremy documents from behind his camera. He's silent the whole time, except towards the end, where Kit is acting out a subdued and earnest rendition of Bhaer’s proposal to Jo, alongside their puppet costar, and Jeremy takes a moment to whisper “this is wild” in Christine’s ear. 

“I know,” Christine whispers back. 

All in all, it's not a bad dress rehearsal. Even Ashley seems satisfied at the end of it, when Christine promises she’ll get Jeremy’s photos to her in two days’ time. 

“You did a great job,” Christine tells Jeremy, once the students have filtered out, leaving the stage in its regular state of disarray. “Thank you. I'll pay you back at some point.” 

“Are you kidding?” Jeremy says. “It was amazing to do theatre stuff again. I had a blast.” 

Jeremy is grinning and in his element. Christine suspects that it's not only the theatre, but the photography that's got him so happy and excited.

“That may be so,” says Christine, “but I still have a plan for paying you back. It might just be I've got a special favor up my sleeve for you.”

————————-

The first step of Christine's plan to help Jeremy and Michael remember where they came from arrives in the form of a surprisingly large package, which she stows in her room, waiting for the appropriate time. In the meanwhile, she studies Jeremy’s photo album. A trip to Goodwill yields the other tools she will need to enact her plan - a red t-shirt with a dinosaur printed on it, and another one with yellow and blue stripes. 

For Jeremy, each day is much the same. He gets up, takes pictures, and does schoolwork. 

For Michael, Best Buy is varying levels of horrible. Sometimes he comes out looking like he's been through a small skirmish, and other times he lurches into the house seeming more like he's barely survived a nuclear apocalypse. 

Christine also has herself to think about. At least one day when Michael seems bouncy and well, she finds that she’s barely functional, exhausted from an audition that didn't go as well as she hoped.

On a Tuesday morning, Christine shoots her Broghurt commercial. She gets to cake on dramatic make-up, sit under the stage lights, and act her heart out. It's cheesy, and dramatic, and it would've been so much fun, if only it wasn't advertising something. In a play, Christine could joyfully take on the role of the funny girl who loves misogynistic yoghurt. In real life, it leaves a bad taste in her mouth, both literally and figuratively. Christine's Squip shows up to mock her all the way through it, and this fills Christine with spite and fortifies her to finish the performance. 

It still ties Christine in knots. Life shouldn't be like this. She shouldn't have to worry that giving what she knows in an objectively funny display of her talents might be a bad thing. Anything related to acting should be a testament to her skill, tenacity, and training, but life doesn't work like that. It simply doesn't. Upon getting home, Christine scrubs the make-up off her face so hard that her skin is raw.

Jeremy notices how upset she is. Unlike Michael, who only recognizes that something is wrong if he was either there to witness the thing or if it involves actual tears, Jeremy always picks up on the moods of others. He's got an excess of empathy, but the the way he expresses it is often lacking, and he sucks at figuring out the reasons behind all the emotions he's catching.

“Are you mad at me?” is what he asks Christine, when he sees her tired slouch and red face.

“No.” 

“Oh. Okay. Sorry. But you’re sad.” 

“A little.” 

“Because of me?” 

Christine bites back a sigh. “No,” she says, and that's when she knows that today is the day she needs to put her plan for Jeremy and Michael into place, if only to make herself feel virtuous again. “I'm going to do something that will make you happy.” She lightly touches Jeremy’s nose, and gets one of his blissed out smiles in return. It's flattering that Jeremy looks at her like that. He sees her as a good person. 

Michael gets home, and luckily it’s an LGBT center day, so he's all cheer and excitement. They've got him making fliers, and that really gets him going. His headphones are on when he first gets in the door, as they always are, but there's a lot to be said about the difference between Michael when he's using his music as something to block the world out, and Michael when he's using his music as something to dance to. 

Christine waits for him to take the headphones off, and claps her hands to get his attention, the same way she does with her kids at the Spirit Zone. Jeremy, who is reading on the couch, looks up first, so Christine claps again to get both of them. 

“And now,” says Christine, “I have a surprise for you.” 

She gets the box she's been hiding in her room. With a flourish, she presents it to Jeremy. 

“It's too light to be another camera,” Jeremy guesses, and Christine snorts out a laugh. Leave it to Jeremy to draw on his most recent experience in opening boxes, in order to come to exactly the wrong conclusion. 

“Unlike the camera,” Christine teases, “you aren't going to get to wait literal months to use the thing I've got for you.” 

“Right,” says Jeremy. 

“It's yellow,” says Michael. 

The thing that Jeremy is pulling out of the box is indeed yellow at the handle. Further down it's white, featuring small blue wheels and a transparent dome with multicolored balls inside. 

“It's a—?” Michael starts.

“Fischer Price vacuum cleaner?” Jeremy finishes, voice going up at the end of each word, like he doesn't trust the validity of any one of them. “I'll… uh… pretend to clean with this? To stave off my unhealthy cleaning urge, that I've been doing really good at controlling, by the way.” 

“You have, man,” Michael agrees, clamping a hand down on Jeremy’s shoulder, as he turns the toy vacuum cleaner quizzically. 

“It's like the one in your photo,” Christine explains. “You know, from when you were a kid?” Something like realization dawns on Jeremy’s face. 

“And you’re replacing it!” he says. “Because I lost it! When I stopped being five!” 

Okay, so maybe not realization. 

“I'm going to recreate your old photos!” says Christine. “I saw something like that online, with two brothers recreating their baby pictures, and I know that you and Michael are different from brothers, considering you've had sex—”

Jeremy chokes. 

“—but you’ve got that long history going for you, and we’re going to utilize it to do something cute, because you’re both my favorite people, and I want good things for you.” 

“So hold up,” Michael says. “You want us to recreate the vacuum cleaner photo?” 

“Yep! And five others.” 

“Which five?” asks Jeremy. 

“It’ll be a surprise.” 

“You’ve put a lot of thought into this,” Michael says, hands up like he's trying to map something out.

“Yep!” 

“You spent money buying the toy vacuum cleaner.” 

“I did!” 

“And you’ve honest to God thought about this.” 

Christine nods, 

“Okay, I’m in.” 

“Jeremy?” 

“Me too. I'm in.” 

Christine goes to where the photo albums are kept. She opens up the one she wants, and sits down on the couch, gesturing for the boys to sit down on either side of her. “So, Jeremy, what do you think about the composition. You’re the expert here.”

“It's kinda grainy? Michael is pissed because he thinks my family gave me the vacuum cleaner to force me into chores. I'm oblivious. What else is new?” 

“Should we start?” asks Michael. 

“I got you costumes.” 

“You’re kidding.” 

“I've never been more serious in my life. I'll get them.”

Christine runs to her room, and retrieves the shirts for Michael and Jeremy to change into. They aren't a perfect match. The lines on Jeremy’s new shirt are thicker than the ones in the picture, and baby Michael had a green T-Rex on his shirt, while grown up Michael gets a faded brown stegosaurus with sunglasses. 

“Okay,” says Michael, “Do I get to keep this after the photo shoot is over, cause it's the best thing I've seen in my life.” 

“I thought I captured the spirit of the original image, despite it not being an exact replica. Do you think so? Because I totally think so.” 

“The shirts are good,” Jeremy agrees. 

“That's because I am awesome!” As Christine speaks each word, she punctuates it by pumping her fist into the air. This is a triumphant moment, and Christine can't just hold her triumph inside. “What are you waiting for?” Christine asks at last. “Get into positions!” 

Michael and Jeremy go over to the wall, with some discussion, and Jeremy dragging Michael around to find the best light source. Once they're situated Jeremy gets into his role at once, adopting a goofy expression, as he peers down at the toy. Michael has to try a series of different glares, until he gets one right. Christine uses her phone, occasionally coming forwards to move an arm, or ensure that Michael’s glasses are artfully eschew. It’s over quickly. Though nineteen years have past since the photo was first taken, going back to it takes less than nineteen minutes. 

“We’ll start in on the rest of the photos in the coming days,” Christine promises. 

“Mysterious,” says Michael. 

“This thing is hypnotic,” Jeremy observes, running the toy vacuum cleaner back and forth and watching the balls pop.

“Dude, no, I'm gonna to save you from yourself, and challenge you to a round of Snake Rattle and Roll on the Nintendo,” Michael says. 

“Okay.” Jeremy leaves his toy, somewhat reluctantly. Christine doesn't comment that they haven't changed out of the shirts, and she doesn't say that there is an ease to their game play that she hasn't seen since they resumed that part of their friendship not so long ago. 

Earlier that day, Christine's character for the Broghurt commercial didn't once say that the brand represented bogus and stupid gender roles. Christine hoped that that would be inferred, as the deepest truths often were. Maybe the audience would sense her discomfort, as a subliminal message of sorts. To Jeremy and Michael, Christine also doesn't say anything out loud about how a picture of their early friendship, before it could was tainted by a rollercoaster of life experiences, might influence how they'd act together going forward. That much might be subliminal too. 

———- 

Each day brings another photo recreation. Picture number two is a slightly older Michael and Jeremy, maybe from first or second grade. They seem to have just gone back to school shopping, for they are sitting at a table surrounded by Staples bags, crisp new notebooks, and unopened erasers wrapped in cellophane. They have freshly sharpened number two pencils in between each finger, making their hands look like “Wolverine claws”, as Jeremy describes it. Their arms are raised in attack, their faces contorted like little kids who are trying to look ferocious, but holding back giggles all the while. 

The first picture, with the vacuum and everything, Christine had chosen partially because it was one of the oldest with Michael and Jeremy together, and partially because it showed a tableau that Christine was used to, with Jeremy lost in his own world, and Michael ready to spring up and protect him from any perceived threat. 

The second picture is fun, and it shows Michael and Jeremy nerding out, totally in sync. 

This time, there's no resistance. Christine hands Michael and Jeremy the pencils, and they eagerly help her to sharpen them, laughing and talking about pencil X-men. This time, Christine hasn't gone so far as to get them period appropriate shirts, but nobody seems to mind. Michael makes one of the pictures his profile on Twitagram Book, and a few hours later, Jeremy does the same. 

The third photo shoot is easy. It's just the back of Jeremy and Michael’s heads as they play video games. Michael still has the same game! He still loves that game! It's almost as if nothing has changed! It does bring about the unintended consequence of Michael needing to get to the right level in the game, so that the pictures match, come hell or high water. The right level is level twelve. So, that's a day gone, but Jeremy does let Christine take turns with the player two controller. 

By the time number four rolls around, Jeremy and Michael are waiting to have their pictures taken before Christine asks them. Today she's chosen one from middle school. It's cute, with Jeremy and Michael standing side by side, holding blue and red slushies, respectively. They've got their tongues out, stained with color. Michael approves of buying slushies for the sake of artistic recreation. Jeremy claims to be on the same page, but he's in a bad mood the rest of the day, taking pictures of objects with his phone, and generally out of sorts. 

He says he doesn't know why, but Christine has some theories. 

“Was middle school hard for you?” she asks. 

“You have no idea.” 

“I might,” Christine says. “Middle school was hard for me too. It was before people started to see me as… pretty… or whatever, not that they ever saw me as _pretty_ pretty, like I still got asked out as a joke and all that, but I don't really understand what was going on with high school and hormones so I'm going to stop talking about it. But you know how in middle school I had to go to room 24B to get extra time on tests, and get my homework signed, and do you remember how everybody used to call that room the ‘tard barn’? Do you remember that?” 

An unexpected and unwanted fluttering rises in Christine's chest as she speaks, emanating outward, so that she can feel her heartbeat in her wrists. What a time to realize that she's still upset by things that happened when she was thirteen! She clears her throat, and straightens a little, suddenly aware that she's been caving in on herself as she speaks. “Anyway, it’s not all bad. I got into theatre because I wanted to be in control of how people saw me, and here I am now.” 

“Christine,” says Jeremy. “That really sucks.” 

“I meant it when I said I didn't like the Spirit Zone kids maybe… like… catching on to how I was as a kid, not that I think there was anything wrong with me. It doesn't matter anymore. Do you wanna tell me what was up with you at that age?” 

Jeremy shakes his head. He does not. 

They let the subject drop. 

He brings it up after dinner later. 

“I felt… I don't know… inconsequential back then, when that middle school photo was taken,” he explains. “Like, it’s when I started feeling like a nobody. I've been thinking about it more. Michael cared about that kid that used to be me, and you cared enough to try and recreate him, even though you didn't know him yet. Maybe he mattered more than I give him credit for, and he's me, so maybe I matter more too. And he had lots of cool shit he could've done if he'd thought he mattered, plus a whole load of stupid stuff he could have avoided. It's good to look at him, ‘cause maybe I can learn stuff from it. Rambling. Sorry.” 

Christine covers Jeremy’s hand with her own. 

“I wish I'd known you then,” Jeremy says. “I knew you existed, but I was dumb and focused on the social hierarchy.” 

“Which I wasn't a part of,” Christine says, a bit ruefully. 

“But then one day, I _did_ see you, and it was like you were the most amazing person in the world. It was like you were everything and you were going to save me.” 

Christine backs away from Jeremy. She likes compliments, and holding a positive place in her friends’ lives, but Jeremy is coming dangerously close to what led the two of them into trouble in the first place. “I don't like that,” she says. “Could you not talk about me like that?” 

“Sorry.” Jeremy backs away as well. “That was a lot. I wish we could've skipped it, but I also wish you’d been in the same preschool class with me and Michael, and we'd been normal, not-creepy friends right from the beginning. Emphasis on the not creepy part.” 

This much, Christine can agree on. “I wish that too.” 

—————-

The content of the final picture between Michael and Jeremy is a secret which Christine intends to hold until she can give it her full attention. In the meanwhile, Christine has a play to bring to fruition. Ashley finishes the posters, a little later than Christine would have liked, but realistically it's not like a play put on by the local after school program was every going to generate a ton of hype. At the very least, kids in the Spirit Zone’s other programs will be there, along with the actors’ parents, and Jeremy has enlisted some people from his photography class to join the audience. It'll be good. 

On the night of the show, Bhaer the Bear is showered with more gifts than ever before. Kit and Hung bring him roses. Tina gives him a sparkly hairclip, and Molly gives him a half eaten box of thin mint cookies. Thomas and Adib both have coins for him, and Ashley bestows upon him a folded up piece of paper. When Christine gives him a tiny pot of honey the kids cheer with as much fervor as Christine ever received at the curtain call of any of her NYU performances. 

“Speech!” calls out Adib, laughing as the other kids take up his rallying cry. _Speech! Speech!_. 

Christine holds up her hands for attention. 

…And Tina cups her hands around her mouth. “Don't cry for meeee Argentina!” she sings out, pushing herself in front of Christine. The joke falls somewhat flat, but Christine makes herself laugh loudly, because she remembers what that feels like, and some of the others follow it up with a few sympathetic giggles of their own. 

“You’ve all worked so hard,” Christine begins. “This might be the weirdest take on Louisa May Alcott’s timeless classic Little Women, but it's your take through and through, and I couldn't be prouder. You’ve all come together as a cohesive unit this time around, and more importantly a family. Now, let's get costumed and ready to give the best performance the Spirit Zone has ever seen!” 

As the kids scatter, Christine takes a few minutes to walk around the theatre. She won't be acting, but that pre-show euphoria is going full force, and she does a little dance to celebrate it, which would come off as mega unhip if the kids were around to see. The set is ready, and a walk up to the lighting booth shows the lighting kid is ready to go. There are two girls Christine doesn't know, from one of the Spirit Zone’s other programs, setting up the ticket booth and concession stand outside. 

Christine’s phone vibrates with a text from Michael. 

_are u coming out for final bows?_

She texts back that she is, and Michael responds right away. 

_bangin. imma heckle u. prepare to be heckled. <3_

The show, once it starts, goes off without a hitch, and with a notable lack of heckling. Quite the opposite. Michael and Jeremy bring Christine flowers at the end, which Christine splits up between the members of her cast, before sending them home to bask in the after glow of their first successful performance. 

———-

They get dinner out after the show. It's late enough that only Federal Smithy’s Bar is open, but that's cool. The place has good food, and the drinking crowd tends towards a group of old men who keep to themselves, especially when Christine comes in with men of her own, which is the only way she's ever come in. 

“We’ve gotta get out before ten, though,” Michael warns. “At ten the music starts to suck.”

“It's the same music they play all the time,” Christine points out. 

“Yeah, but it's loud.” 

“And your headphones aren't?” 

“Wrong kinda loud.” 

It's only nine, which leaves them ample time for a celebratory meal of wings and cheesy artichoke dip, which is cheap enough shared between three broke people. When the waitress isn't looking, Michael takes a bottle of Sprite out of the pocket of his hoodie, and covertly replaces everybody’s water. That’s what it takes to make things a real party. 

Christine shares stories of the kids and the rehearsal process, which turns into stories from play rehearsals past, which Jeremy chimes in on from time to time. Even Michael has a few tales from the theatre, not because he's ever acted, but he more than put in his time hanging with Jeremy and Christine at the Middleborough High School auditorium. 

Eventually Michael hits on a story of sneaking off with Jeremy to make out in the prop closet. He's smiling, eyes bright beneath his glasses, as he describes how Jeremy somehow came out with a different shirt than the one he'd come in with. 

“It was hella dark in there, right?” Michael says. “And there were lots of clothes and stuff on the floor. I get that he couldn't see what he was grabbing, and if he'd ended up with a different color t-shirt or something that would've been one thing, but we got out, and he had this fucking doublet thing, probably from Les Mis, and it was on _backwards_.” 

“We were in a hurry to get out!” 

“Doublet,” Michael repeats. 

“I was a little… distracted. So sue me alright?” 

“I'll say you were.” 

Jeremy makes a face, and Michael kicks his feet under the table, to which Jeremy retaliates in kind. Christine has to keep her legs close to her chair, to avoid being caught up in the crossfire that ensues. They're bickering like an old couple rather than like an _ex_ -couple, and that's how Christine decides the time has come to bring up the topic of the final picture. 

“Jeremy looks good in formalwear,” Christine says. “It's a shame I've never seen it outside of plays and prom.” 

“Michael’s never worn it outside of prom,” Jeremy says. 

“That's ‘cause it itches and makes me want to die. Feels wrong, moves wrong, looks wrong. Everything about it is wrong.”

“But prom was fun,” says Christine. “With the lights, and the food, and the friends and everything?” 

Michael gives a noncommittal shrug, taking a bite out of one of the chicken wings. “I was imagining something sort of like the movie Carrie, so it exceeded my expectations.” He licks his fingers. 

“Come on,” says Christine. “You were more into it than that.” 

“I liked the part where Brooke and Chloe dared Rich to eat his corsage and he _did_ it. I wonder where he is now? Haven't heard from him in a while. It doesn't bode well.” 

As Michael talks, Christine scrolls through her phone photo album, searching for the image she has saved. Jeremy watches his food. 

“I was thinking for your and Jeremy’s last picture in my little project, you could do this one.” Christine pushes her phone across the table, so that Michael and Jeremy can see the old photo she’s chosen. It's from the end of their senior prom. It shows Michael and Jeremy swaying to the music, with Jeremy’s head on Michael’s shoulder, and Michael’s arms around Jeremy’s waist. Just seconds before that picture was taken it had been all three of them smushed together, awkwardly trying to slow dance without stepping on each other. Christine had stepped back to get some space, only to see Michael and Jeremy melt together, apparently needing nothing of the sort. 

Christine had already broken up with them at the time. It'd been months since she'd officially been either of their girlfriend, and she hadn't been lying when she'd said finding herself was more important to her than being in a relationship. The problem had been figuring out how to go from being a romantic partner to being a good friend, and successfully navigating the line between the two roles. Sometimes Christine still finds herself involved in and even initiating pseudo romantic moments between herself and the boys. 

Looking at Michael and Jeremy at that moment at the prom, Christine had felt blissfully, giddily certain that she never wanted to cling to them the way they clung to each other. She'd wanted to be around them, but differently. She'd snapped the picture primarily to remind herself of that, but also because Michael and Jeremy were good together. They were good for each other. And Christine had truly hoped that Michael-and-Jeremy would last, even if Michael-and-Jeremy-and-Christine could not. 

Jeremy barely glances at the photo. Michael does, but then he looks up at Jeremy, who won't meet his eyes, and it's all over. 

“We can't,” Michael says. “It's against the rules. Photos from albums only. Nothing loose and definitely nothing digital. Sorry Chris.” 

————————

Jeremy has the bedroom that night, and Michael has the couch. Christine lingers, some instinct telling her that Michael might want to talk. She's right. 

“Did I ever tell you how Jeremy and I broke up?” Michael asks. He's sitting in his boxers, a hoodie, and that dinosaur tee, scrolling through the Network without appearing to really look at it. 

“You talked a lot about him leaving you at school,” Christine says. She'd been in the interesting position of being Michael and Jeremy’s main confidant at the time, and most likely butchering it horribly, as she struggled to adjust to the trials and unfamiliarity of her own freshman year of college. 

“Yeah. But how we _broke up_ sucked major ass. It was a long time after he left, you know, and we had our Skype thing, and I was telling him about this thing at the gay student union, and he was like ‘good for you, you can find a new boyfriend’, and I was like ‘are you not my boyfriend anymore?’, and then he was getting all red and nervous like he does, you know? And he was like—”

Michael leans back into the headboard of the couch, pressing his fingers into his eyelids. He takes a deep breath, and goes on. “He was like, ‘I thought for sure we were over when I left like that’, and I didn't know how to take it, right? So I was all ‘yeah dude totally over’ and he looked like I'd slapped him in the fucking face. And then it took me like a week to figure out that he hadn't to been trying to break up with me, just assuming the worst, like Jeremy does, and like an idiot I’d gone and confirmed it and there was no going back.” 

“Have you thought about telling him this?” Christine asks. Michael hasn't moved or opened his eyes. 

“It's too late, and besides, I don't wanna risk what we've got here. The three of us living together is rad. I'm happy with this.” 

“I can tell.” Christine gets up. Michael’s computer is precariously close to sliding off his lap, so she picks it up, and places it gently on the ground. That way Michael can have his angst fest in peace without any damage to his property. 

“You seem tired,” Christine says. “I'm going to let you get some rest.” 

If Michael hears, he doesn't answer. 

————-


	10. Chapter 10 - Christine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: Misogyny being played out in an extremely unjust way, misogynistic language, abortion mention, discussion about bodily autonomy (and lack there of under control of the squip), nervous breakdown

The water in the bathroom has been dripping for days. The faucet is dripping, the shower head is dripping, and the pipes are making a hollow and constant rushing sound. It's livable, though Christine is dreading the household’s upcoming water bill. It's _livable_ , but Christine is bearing the brunt of it. Being in the room closest to the bathroom means that she can hear the water rushing through the pipes at all hours of the day and night. 

It's not the worst sound to deal with. The are apps built for the express purpose of listening to ambient noises that sound similar— looping MP3s of burbling brooks, ocean waves, flowing rivers, and all that. The issue isn't so much the sounds as what they foretell, which is probably trouble. 

Sure enough, Christine wakes one morning to find that the back wall of her room is shiny and discolored, with a drenched poster stuck to it. It's not a deluge of water. It's more as though the wall is sweating, like Jeremy does when he gets nervous. There isn't a puddle on the floor, but it's damp enough that Christine wouldn't want to go running across it. 

There's lots of stuff against that wall, just like there's lots of stuff everywhere in the room. It's a mix of dirty clothes, clean clothes (dirty now!), food wrappers, and books. Christine uses a broom to push it all a few inches away from where the water is. 

_”Finally cleaning?”_ asks Christine's Squip. _“That's an excellent choice.”_

Christine drops the broom like the handle is made of molten rock. 

_“I guess there was no hope of it keeping up for long.”_

Christine is shaking. She bends down by the stuff she's just swept. Maybe she won't clean. Maybe she’ll just check for water damage, and see if there's anything important worth rescuing. 

The Squip tsks. _”Lazy, dirty girl. I could save you a lot of shame, but I suppose you won't allow that._

In the pile, Christine finds her Playbill from when she saw _Children of Eden_ with the tickets her dads bought her as a graduation gift. The moisture has made the pages stick together, and the cover curl inwards. Christine holds it to her chest. She gets up and fetches a towel, which she using to wipe off as much water from the wall as she can. Maybe it will stop on its own, but by the time Christine has to go to work it still hasn't, and by the next morning that slow trickle of water is still going strong. 

This is the kind of situation that landlords are for. Luckily for Christine, she's friends with their daughter, and has been meeting her for breakfast once a week ever since the incident with the keys. Unluckily for Christine, if she tells the landlords or their daughter about the water, they’ll want to see her room, and then she’ll die. 

Christine and Hope pass a very enjoyable breakfast of boiled eggs and fresh fruit, talking mostly about Hope’s younger sister, who is trying to be a cosmetics influencer on YouTube, at the ripe age of fourteen. They do not talk about the water in the wall. 

Days pass. The water doesn't go away, but it doesn't get worse, either. Christine learns to live with it, but as she's wiping it down each day, she's wiping off slushy grey circles of mold along with it, and that's a level of house cleaning depravity that she wishes she could’ve lived her entire life without experiencing. 

A cockroach scuttles across the floor. Christine pauses in drying the wall, and rubs her eyes, to make sure she's really seeing what she thinks she is seeing. The roach does not grow a human face or start talking to Christine, and therefore there's a fair to middling chance of being real. What if he has friends, and they invade the entire house? What if it's all Christine’s fault? No sane and functioning human being would allow this to happen, so where does that leave Christine? 

One thing that Christine has learned, helping to put together the sets for various high school and college plays, is that living spaces reflect their owners. That's why each set piece much be chosen carefully, at least insofar as budget will allow, to reflect the story that the director wants to tell about the characters. 

If Christine were a character in a play, what would her bedroom say about her? It's vastly different from the persona that she puts on outside in the world. What would the audience draw from the way that she lives in secret? Surely she'd be be seen as irredeemably disgusting at worst, and not living up to her potential at best. She _must_ have the potential to put things in livable order!

Jeremy and Michael are blissfully unaware of the house’s water problems. Normally Michael would be aware, but work has him occupied. Jeremy’s only two settings when it comes to the minutiae of every day life are oblivious and anxious, and this time he's on the first. His cousin’s wedding is approaching. His worries are there, and his joys are focused on his photography class, which has started doing dark room practice. The dripping exists for Christine alone, like a tell tale heart, reminding her that her competence is all a show. 

So Christine does the only thing she can do in this circumstance. She ignores the water, and hopes it won't get worse. 

Before long, the world throws her other things to deal with, anyway. 

—————-

Michael and Jeremy await the day that Christine’s Broghurt commercial comes out with zeal and excitement. The company has already paid Christine, thanked her for her hard work, and let her know when to expert it to start showing up on Netflix commercial rotations. The whole thing where it's going to be a Netflix commercial, the most despised form of ad, just goes to show that Broghurt is an evil company through and through, but Jeremy and Michael start a countdown to Christine's commercial airing even so. 

Little do they know that they're counting down to her eventual ruin. Christine herself doesn't realize it until days after the chain of events has begun. The night that they set aside to watch the commercial is happy and fun. Jeremy makes popcorn, and they sit down on the couch, switching from TV program to TV program. Netflix does ads differently, so they say. They never interrupt shows with them, and depending on how much you pay for the service, you might need to watch a little as two of them between episodes as penance for your binge watching. Christine, Jeremy, and Michael are on the cheapest plan, so not only do they get three or four, long commercials like Christine's are more common. 

There's no way to select what commercial they want to watch. They have to sit through ads for Honda, McDonald’s, and three different anti-depressants, two of which Jeremy has tried and can report back on. 

“I don't know why they bother,” Michael says. “This verifiably makes me want to buy the products less.” 

“Same,” Jeremy says. “Except for the medicine, but I'm already on what my insurance will pay for, so I don't know what they think throwing the idea that there might be something better in my face is going to do.” 

“Is this it?” Christine leans forward, as a pop of pink appears on the screen, but it isn't her commercial at all, just a pseudo feminist lipstick ad. 

They have to watch another fourteen commercials until they hit the one they're looking for. Christine squeals. She’s never seen herself act, aside from shaky videos on her dads’ phones, and practicing in the mirror. Here, the lighting is ideal, and the angles and close ups are perfect to capture her every expression. The dramatic tension in shines in Christine's face, as she begins the piece lurking in the shadows, trying to snatch a bite of that sweet sweet Broghurt from the arms of business men, construction workers, kings, and professional wrestlers. The orgasmic joy of finally getting it is portrayed with humorous and over the top vigor. The final frame of her enjoying the Broghurt in its new pink plastic container, while the men from the beginning look on, is as seductive as eating yoghurt can be. 

“Wow,” Jeremy says, as the commercial fades to black. 

“You acted the hell out of that,” Michael says. “Seriously, you’re so good at what you do. You’re fucking amazing.” 

“I kinda want Broghurt now,” says Jeremy. “And that stuff is terrible.” 

“Way to be susceptible to crappy advertising, my dude.” 

“It's not that,” Jeremy argues. “It's that that's _Christine_ is on the TV screen, telling me that Broghurt is good and I should eat it. If Christine tells me something is good, I believe her. It's a trip. I bet that's why they use celebrities to endorse diet drinks and stuff. You’re used to seeing them, so you trust them.” 

“You’re more than used to seeing me,” Christine points out. 

“In the dystopic future we’re heading towards,” says Michael, “advertising companies will be able to generate custom ads in the forms of people we trust most, which they’ll figure out by looking at our browsing and social media history. That's something they’re talking about on the Network. You know, how Squips can diversify beyond being just a scary mind control thing, and… shit. I'm being a downer, aren't I?” 

“Just a little bit.” 

“Look, forget about it. Let’s watch the commercial again. I wasn't trying to kill the vibe.” 

Watching the commercial again is a matter of first watching twenty-eight other commercials, until Netflix gives them they want to see. This time, Jeremy and Michael manage to get through the event without bleak commentary on Squips or the evils of the advertising industry. 

When it's finished, Christine goes back to her room, satisfied in her performance and the fact that her commercial isn't even being shown that much, and nobody is going to be misled by it anyway. 

The water on Christine's wall is coming down a little thicker. The puddle at the edge is further out than it was when she left it. She wipes it down with the towel, and goes to bed. 

———— 

Little Women is over at the Spirt Zone, but the semester is not. The little kids that Christine works with are having a great time playing improv games and writing short skits. Christine is trying to get the older kids to work on skits as well. They have a talk about how the theatre has been used to examine different social issues, ranging from the works of Shakespeare and Ibsen, right up through modern musicals. Christine gives the students the task of pairing up to write short dialogues, dramatizing an issue of their choice. 

It's not Christine's most well received suggestion. Ashley and Adib want to study for their final exams instead, leaving Christine at a loss. She’s stuck between not wanting to force them to participate, and not wanting to fail at doing her job. 

“My parents didn't come to see Little Women,” Ashley explains to Christine. She's not exactly penitent, but she's also not glaring like she's trying to start world war three. “Even after I told them the date and showed them the poster with the correct date and everything. They aren't going to care what I do for this.”

“We all care,” says Christine. “I for one really want to see what you come up with.”

Ashley stares back, unimpressed. 

“But that's not the most important thing. The most important thing is whether or not you care. So do you?” 

Ashley shrugs. 

“Give some thought to that. I don't give you a grade. If acting just isn't your thing, then it isn't your thing. I think it might be, though. You rocked in Little Women. So you can write your script about whatever you want to tell the world, or you can sit here and study what everybody else wants you to know, which is fine too. Gaining knowledge and all that is really important, but so are chances to create. You get to choose what you need most right now.” 

Adib’s reasoning for not wanting to write a script are more cut and dry. His AP chemistry class fills him with existential dread, and he's barely been eating or sleeping in an attempt to cram in more study time, so why would he act? He'd leave off breathing if it could somehow buy him more time. Christine's boss would probably kill her for it, but she makes a deal with him that he can sit in the back and study, but only if he accepts a snack while he does so. Not wanting to single him out in front of his peers, Christine starts providing food for everybody. She buys bulk packets of crackers, and bags of those tiny oranges that are popular this time of year, and tries not to think about how the weekly cost of this venture amounts to about two hours’ salary. Jeremy wasn't wrong when he said she was in deep with this whole mentor thing.

———-

Jeremy is the first one to come across Christine’s Broghurt commercial in an unexpected place. He drags Christine over to the couch after work one day to show her. His college uses a message board format to foster student discussions within its E-Classrooms, which is kinda old school, but gets the job done. Most of it is strictly academic, but his Freshmen Seminar course has an off-topic board, for students to get to know each other. They've been signaling their friendly intentions to each other mostly through cat videos and Vine complications, and somebody has posted a YouTube link to Christine's commercial, saying it was cute, and made them want to give Broghurt a second chance. The conversation after is about how gross Broghurt is, and how the age of advertisement free Netflix really was a golden time. Not the worst thing in the world. 

“I have fans!” Christine jokes. 

“You do!” 

“Don't tell them where I live. That'd be weird.” 

“Sure thing.” 

Jeremy who, like Adib, is getting ready for final exams, goes back to his coursework. Christine goes back to her room, and finds the water has moved further out past her wall. She wipes it up, pushes her mess back away from it, and ignores it some more. 

——————— 

The Spirit Zone kids are ready to throw Thomas out the window. His script, which he hasn't found a partner for, is pro-life propaganda about how women who get abortions are irresponsible baby murdering harlots. Furthermore, he believes that Ashley should be forced to take a part in his show, since she's “not doing anything else”. 

Tina and Molly, the same girls who once decried Ashley as the group bully, have taken her side in this issue, and spend the class huddled with Ashley, plotting revenge while Thomas fumes. 

The only conclusion that Christine can come to about he social lives of her young charges is that it's all too complicated for her to follow from the outside. They are with her for nine hours a week, compared to the forty some odd hours they spend at school together. It's no wonder that Christine is missing a lot. Regardless of that, Christine doesn't have to know all their social intricacies to know that Thomas is overstepping. 

She takes Thomas aside to talk to him. 

“How are you feeling?” Christine asks. She knows exactly how _she's_ feeling, but she needs to buy some time to decide how to articulate it in the best way. Being a mentor to somebody holding vile beliefs, who is nonetheless still a child and needs to be treated as such, is another one of those things that Christine didn't know she was signing up for when she started on at the Spirit Zone. 

“Ashley shouldn't get to sit out, if the rest of us have to act,” Thomas complains. “I've done all the work for her. How is it fair to let her sit there and do nothing?” 

“It's completely fair, because if you choose to sit out the project, you can. If you all want to sit out the project I'll probably have to resign, but I'm not going to stop you.” 

(It's still not what Christine wants to say. It's a departure from the issue at hand, because the issue at hand needs to be handled well, and she's not _there_ yet, gosh darn it.)

“It's acting class,” says Thomas, like Christine is being stupid. “On what planet do we not have to do _acting_ in acting class?” 

“The planet where this isn't school.” 

“But why come here if you’re not going to act?” 

“Sometimes you just need a place to be,” Christine explains, and maybe she's hitting on something there. “A _safe_ place to be, and writing a role for Ashley that focused so much on her body, and asserting that she had to put on a show promoting something that she clearly doesn't believe encroached on her right to feel safe in this theatre.” 

“But she's not doing anything! It's not like I was interrupting her from sitting there and doing nothing.” 

“So every time you’re sitting around doing nothing that means someone gets to march in and make you do things you don't want to do? Maybe even things you’re morally opposed to? Not cool.” 

Thomas deflates a little bit, but the sneer hasn't left his face. “I’ll do it myself then. With Bhaer as my co-star.” 

He turns to go, and that's almost it. There's stuff to consider. Free speech, which doesn't protect people from the consequences of their actions, or mean that they can say anything that they want in any location, but Christine is an instructor here, and that means something. She's the one who told the kids to choose a social issue to write about. Does she have the right to stop Thomas from doing something she disagrees with? Back when she was in high school, the ethics of abortion got debated in science class. Gay marriage got debated in sociology. Christine had to listen to that, and go home and tell her loving fathers that a girl in class had likened gay marriage to a man marrying their dog, and Christine was the one who’d gotten a detention for being rude in her rebuttal. 

“You can't,” Christine tells him. 

“What?” 

“Molly bought Bhaer. She's not giving you permission.” 

(Christine still isn't doing it right. She should be better than this.)

“I'll get my own puppet.” 

Christine shakes her head. “Look,” she says. “It's like this. There have been bombings at abortion clinics. Shootings. We don't know what anybody else in this room has done, or will do in their life, and everybody needs to feel safe coming into this room. You’re going to have to choose a different topic. Reproductive health is kinda outside the scope of this program anyway. We might not even be allowed to talk about it here.” 

“Then tell that to the girls,” Thomas says, with a gesture towards Tina, Molly, and Ashley, who are huddled together whispering. Christine bites back a sigh. What a perfect disaster this has turned out to be! 

“I will,” she agrees. The words taste wrong. They _are_ wrong, unless they aren't, which is possibility, albeit a very very slim one. There is something sitting in the back of the theatre, offering to help Christine navigate this situation. It's been gaining shape over the course of Christine’s conversation with Thomas. 

_’Not today, Satan,’_ Christine thinks at it. 

_’How very mature of you,’_ it answers back. 

Telling the girls that the Spirit Zone isn't the place to get into an abortion debate goes about as well as expected. Christine has talked too much about using theatre to change the world, and now she's playing the hypocrite. 

And so, she tries for honesty. “It's not that I don't agree with you,” she says. “It's just not a topic that I'm qualified to deal with in this setting.” 

“Then how are you qualified to be teaching us at all?” Ashley asks. 

It's a fair point. 

Christine's Squip takes the passenger seat in Christine's car on the way home. Whatever. Christine throws her purse down onto the Squip’s lap as if she isn't there, which she isn't. The purse shimmers and disappears beneath the image of the Squip’s, only the handle sticking out of her crotch, like a glitch in a Sims game. 

_’Your mistake,’_ the Squip lectures, _’is that the project you gave them was too open ended, and you asked them to tackle controversial topics. You should have given them something tame and specific to address, such high stakes testing.’_

Christine doesn't answer, just continues to drive, with her unwanted passenger besides her. 

Upon getting home, she almost collides with Michael in the doorway. 

“Dude,” he says, taking no notice of the wetness standing in Christine's eyes. “Did you get my texts?” 

Christine shakes her head. 

“Do not check the comments on the YouTube page with your commercial. Or pages, I mean. There have been remixes.” 

“My… what? Remixes?” 

“Just stay off the internet for a while.” 

Just as nobody has ever not thought of elephants by being told not to think of elephants, nobody has ever stayed off the Internet by being told to stay off the internet. At least Christine never has, ‘cause she has a contrary streak, and her impulse control isn't the best. She thanks Michael, too tired for conversation, and goes to her room. The water is spreading out half a foot from her wall now. Christine lies down so that she's facing the other direction and can't see it, and loads up YouTube. 

Her video has over 3,000 likes, and precisely 1,022 dislikes. 1,022 is more people than Christine thought about seeing the commercial when she made it, let alone hating it. Large audiences are something that Christine associates with the stage, but now it dawns on her that she may have found an unintentionally large and unpredictable audience, and that she has no means to control it. She swallows back the lump in her throat and reads. 

The top comments aren't that bad. A lot of people think the commercial is ridiculous, and are laughing at it. Some people are debating whether Broghurt is a real company, or a parody of toxic masculinity, that is going to take of its mask at the last moment. Some people love Broghurt because it's a company that knows how to make fun of itself. They liken it to Cards Against Humanity, which doesn't make a lot of of sense. A lot of people just really hate Netflix commercials, and are in the comments to complain about that. 

Some people call Christine a bimbo. Another waxes poetic about the beauty of her eyelashes, calling them “hypnotic”. This is followed by a litany of comments arguing that she is not attractive at all. She's fat. She's ugly. She's cheap. She's a whore and a cow. There's a detailed and disgusting fantasy that somebody has written about her. It's been down voted nearly into oblivion, but it's there. Christine scrunches her eyes shut, and pushes her phone away. 

_’Bad things happen when you don't listen to me,’_ the Squip warns. 

Christine closes her eyes even tighter. Her head and the bridge of her nose are hurting. There's a ringing in her ears from the pressure she's putting on herself. 

_’You should clean your room,’_ the Squip says, just like it always does. _’according to my calculations, the situation is becoming more urgent by the hour.’_

Christine does not get up, and she does not clean her room. 

—————

The water rises. It drips, and it spreads out. Scientifically, it's possible to drown in a puddle of less than three inches. Just looking at her wall makes Christine feel as though her lungs are filled up, and she can't move or breathe. 

Christine's phone rings. It never does that, unless it's for work. Sure enough, a glance at the screen shows that it's her boss from the Spirit Zone. 

“Hi?” Christine strains not to sound hoarse and groggy. She strains not to sound shaky and sad. If she doesn't sound professional and alert, they’ll probably think she's an alcoholic or something. 

“You needn't come in to work today,” the voice on the other end of the phone says. 

“Oh. Okay? Wh—”

“Your final paycheck will be deposited into your bank account on Friday afternoon.” 

“What?” Christine's heart begins to pound. “Is this about my conversation with Thomas yesterday? What happened?” 

“Your yoghurt videos. Some parents found them online, and complained they were too overtly sexual. You know that there are rules about how we handle our personal image. No bathing suit pictures on Twitagram Book, no going out clubbing where parents can see you. No getting caught purchasing cigarettes at any local store. Surely you can see how appearing on TV wearing a skimpy top and moaning at a bowl of yoghurt would fall under those rules.” 

“I—”

“I'm very sorry.” 

The line goes dead. 

Somebody starts to bang on Christine's door. 

She wants to jump out of her skin. 

She wants to go back in time and erase the last five minutes. Her life can't be over if that conversation didn't happen! 

“I really need you to get out here,” Jeremy calls. 

“I can't!”

“It's urgent.” 

Christine goes to the door. She stops, her hand on the doorknob, and wipes her face. Her hand on the doorknob goes limp. Jeremy will see her, if she opens the door. She might be able to take the shame of him seeing her cry, but the idea of him seeing her bedroom is too much. “Go to the kitchen,” she calls out. “I’ll meet you there.” She waits until she hears Jeremy's footsteps retreat to the other side of the house, then she waits some more for her breathing to go back to normal. 

She's been fired! She worked her hardest, cared with all her heart, and still got fired. 

Maybe the breathing is a lost cause. She can't keep Jeremy waiting forever. She opens the door, and creeps out.” 

“We’ve got a problem,” Jeremy says. “I just— are you okay?”

Christine rallies all of her acting ability and schools her face into a mask of false calm. “Keep talking.” Her voice is as dull and heavy as lead, and as brittle as egg shells. 

“Okay. Um. I just flushed the toilet, and the water came spouting up the shower drain.” 

Christine rubs her temples. Of course this would be happening now. 

“Don't go in there. It's sick. I took a picture. Not that you want to see it. I'm going to delete that one, come to think of it.” 

“… Have you tried the plunger?” she asks weakly. 

“In the shower?” 

Christine might die. Jeremy has just added more water to the waters rising around her. 

“Christine?” 

Christine's got nothing. 

“Can I get the landlord’s number from you? I don't have it. If it's easier I can just call Michael at work and get it from him. You don't look good. You should lie down.” 

“…could you wait a while to call the landlords?” Christine asks. “I can't deal with them right now.” 

“You are aware that there's toilet water coming up the shower drain?” 

“Jeremy, please?” 

“I guess? Yeah. The toilet is fine. Except for the water. Which is coming up. Through the shower. It can wait. Do you need anything?” 

“You should probably do the dishes if the landlords are going to come,” Christine says. “We don't want them to think we're filthy.”

“Right! Not sure if I trust the water in the house anymore, but I'll get on it.” 

Christine returns to her room, fully intending to utilize the privacy to have the emotional breakdown to end all emotional breakdowns. She lets her tears flow. She lets herself hyperventilate. 

She lets herself do both of these things, and finds very quickly that she's not getting any satisfaction from either of them. Everything is horrible, nothing is okay, but it's time to clean up her mess. She wipes her eyes, and spins around the room, looking for a place to start. Clothes! She walks to and fro, picking them up off the floor until her arms are full. She carries them over to the washing machine. She doesn't look at or acknowledge Jeremy, though he must notice her red cheeks and the tear tracks down her face. She goes back to her room, and inspects her progress. 

There's no visible difference. Her mess is dense. It's impenetrable. 

_’Keep going,’_ the Squip whispers. Christine sits down on the floor and wraps her arms around herself. 

———— 

Jeremy checks in several times as the day progresses. Christine answers, but only enough to make sure that he doesn't come in, and he doesn't call the landlord. Michael tries to get her attention when he comes home from Best Buy, and receives the same treatment. They try to entice her with food, offers of help, and promises to recreate _all_ of their prom pictures, any way she wants. 

Christine's Squip won't shut up. It insults and coaxes. It threatens to shock her and take over, which it can't do. The Red ensured that. Nobody who has ever drank Red has had the Squip take over their body again, no matter what else the things might do. 

Even so, the Squip threatens to shock and take over. 

It threatens to _take over_.

It threatens to take over, Christine’s stomach threatens to spew its contents all over her floor, and it’s kinda an epiphany. 

Christine leaves her room. Jeremy and Michael are waiting for her. 

“I think I'm having a Squip breakdown,” she announces. That's the technical term for it, coined by the Network. There are ways to deal with that, and the first step is recognizing it. Christine's voice is thready, even so. It shakes. She keeps her body pressed up against the closed door of her bedroom. “I didn't see it at first, because it doesn't look the same as it does with Jeremy, or with Rich, but…” 

Christine flattens her hands against the door. It's like she's backing away without backing away. Michael is watching her, slightly mystified, like he hasn't brought Jeremy back from this very situation a million times over. Jeremy hasn't moved. 

Okay. It's time for Christine to stop gasping. It's time to speak calmly and rationally. 

“The Squip was the worst thing that ever happened to me,” Christine continues. She's already failing at the calmly and rationally thing. “And I only just figured it out tonight, because it felt good when it was happening.” Christine inhales sharply through her nose. “But I couldn't control my body. I couldn't control anything.” 

Finally, Michael comes forward. That's what Christine wants, isn't it? For one of the two of them to make this attack of feelings a little smaller for her. 

Without meaning to, Christine flinches away from Michael. His hand drops. 

“What can I do for you?” Michael asks. His voice is soft. 

“Could you help me clean my room?” Christine asks. She is crying now. There's no hiding it, so she doesn't try. “It's too bad. I can't do it myself. And the landlords. And the shower…” 

“Yeah. Of course. God, Christine, of course.” 

Christine wipes at her face, not that it does her any good. 

“Can I go in?” 

“It's really bad.” 

“That's fine. We’ll fix it.” 

Christine opens the door.

“Jeremy too?” Michael asks. “Or only me?” 

“Jeremy too.” 

“Okay.” Michael gestures for Jeremy to follow him inside. Slowly, Christine backs into the room, allowing them to follow. She's sits down on her bed, her legs not wanting to hold her up anymore. 

Jeremy and Michael don't ask Christine how things got this bad. They don't call her dirty and terrible. They survey the disaster, and say nothing. Michael gets Christine a sweater out of one of her drawers. 

“Is there anything you don't want us to touch?” Jeremy asks. 

“Me?” Christine chokes a little. This a new development. She’s never minded if Michael or Jeremy touched her before, but she doesn't want it right now. 

“That's fine,” Michael says. “You’re in control here. Is it okay if we start?” 

Christine nods. 

There's some hushed conversation between Michael and Jeremy of how they’re going to handle the task. Jeremy gets the empty boxes left over from when he moved in, while Michael starts sweeping everything into a big pile in the center of the room. They set aside a few boxes for stuff, a few boxes for clothes, and some bags for obvious trash. Really good stuff, insofar as Jeremy and Michael can recognize it, will be stacked on the desk. 

They are uncharacteristically quiet, and uncharacteristically methodical. Christine's head, eyes, and stomach hurt. It's like being sick, only she isn't sick. After a while, one of the boys gets Christine a glass of water, which she sips, as they work to untangle her mistake that's several months in the making. 

At some point Christine falls asleep watching them. 

She wakes up to the sun streaming in through the window. Her throat is dry, and her head is killing her. The room looks empty and unfamiliar. The floors are cleared of debris, her desk and shelf are neatly arranged, and even the rabbit hutches have been mucked out. There's a stack of boxes against the part of the wall that isn't leaking. The only part of Christine's room that still needs to be fixed is the bed that she slept on. She gets herself a glass of water and couple of Advil, swallows them down, and gets started on that final task. She feels empty this morning, devoid of all emotion, and so, so drained. She wants to wake up Michael, just to hear him say that things are okay, and he still likes her. She wants the same from Jeremy, but isn't sure she can deal with him yet. He’ll want to dredge up stuff from junior year, and that's a lot to take. Even so, the part of her that aches to have Jeremy affirm that he doesn't think she's disgusting and stupid now that he's seen the way she's been living is strong. She cleans, and lets that eat away at her, until her bed is neatly made and she can't take in anymore without getting reassurance from somebody. 

Michael is on the couch today. He's dead asleep. Christine stands and watches him. She shouldn't wake him up, but… 

She shakes his shoulder. There's a moment of grogginess, but then he bolts upwards, perhaps remembering the events of last night. In his haste to wake up, he puts his glasses on eschew. It makes Christine smile, but then her lips twitch downwards. 

“Are we okay?” Christine asks. 

“Of course. Always. Are you okay? How are you holding up?” 

“Better.” 

“That's good.” Michael offers her a crooked smile. “You want breakfast or something?” 

Words are failing Christine, so she sits down and wraps her arms around Michael’s midsection. 

“You okay with touching today?” Michael asks. 

Christine nods, and Michael pulls her into a tight hug. 

“You know there's nothing you could do to make you not adore you, right?” 

It's one of those rare moments when Michael says exactly the right thing. 

—————— 

They call the landlords at ten. But twelve, they've had two different plumbers to the house. A few hours, and a lot of complaints about how the plumbing in the house was a disaster waiting to happen, and things are fixed. It hurts to know that it could've been so easy, if Christine hadn't put things off. She offers to take the gross task of cleaning out the shower, and Jeremy offers to help, much to Christine's chagrin. It’s not that she's been _avoiding_ him all day. It’s just that she's been avoiding him all day. 

He's going to apologize. A lot. Christine doesn't know if she can take it. She's not mad at him, but she doesn't yet have the energy to make sure he understands what's going through her mind and his place in it. 

“You can help,” Christine says, “but we’re listening to Come From Away and not talking. Have you heard Come From Away?” 

Obediently, Jeremy shakes his head and keeps his mouth closed. 

“You’ll like it.” Christine fidgets with the sleeve of her sweater. “We’ll talk for real tonight,” she adds. 

—————

That evening Christine invites Michael and Jeremy into her room once more. It's symbolic. She let them in last night when she was desperate, and tonight she can let them in now that the storm has passed. 

Michael hands Christine a strip of paper, with a Skype ID written on it. “A shrink from the Network,” he says. “I used my leet connections to get you someone to work with right away.” 

“Thanks.” Christine puts the paper on her bedside table. “I’m feeling a lot better by the way. Still kind of freaked that I got fired. Did I tell you I got fired?” 

“Called the Spirit Zone last night to tell them you were sick and couldn't come in, and they told me,” Michael says. “What's their deal?” 

“Broghurt issues,” Christine tells him. Just hearing the word Spirit Zone hurts. “That commercial was a huge mistake.” 

“They fired you over that?” 

Christine nods. 

“That's bullshit.” 

“I'm sorry,” says Jeremy. Christine's muscles tighten. “For the Broghurt thing, and for ruining your life.” 

Michael shoots Jeremy a _look_. 

“I don't blame you for me getting Squipped,” Christine says. “You tried to give me a choice. You weren't the one that took that choice away. If I blamed you, we wouldn't be sitting together now. And besides, if I blamed you, I'd also have to blame Rich and Jenna, which I don't want to do.” 

“Still—”

“Don’t.” 

Jeremy closes his mouth. 

“I think you were on to something when you told me that you don't just do the opposite of what your Squip tells you— that you try to evaluate things for yourself. My brain feels like sand tonight, but I'm going hit you up for advice on that soon.” 

“Okay,” Jeremy agrees. 

“I guess I've been working so hard to keep my Squip from controlling me that I've been losing control of the rest of my life. Are you two grossed out? I'm grossed out.” 

“Not grossed out,” Michael assures her. 

“Same,” Jeremy agrees. 

“I let myself get to a bad place,” Christine admits. “And I'm not sure to what degree I'm still there now. This is all new to me. But whatever. I'm not defeated. That much I'm sure of. I just need time to work things out.” 

——————

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note, just to make things clear - This chapter is *not* meant to be Christine making the wrong choice about the commercial and getting punished by the text. This is meant to be her experiencing a completely unfair consequence of doing something that she does not deserve to suffer those kinds consequences for, because the world is a mess. 
> 
> She'll come out on top of things eventually.


	11. Chapter 11 - Michael

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings - Drunkenness and workplace sexual harassment

Michael is not immune to the household obsession with photos and photography. He has questions about his life, his friendships, and where it’s all going. Could just be the way to find answers is by looking back. 

Specifically, Michael catches himself pouring over photos of Jeremy and him right before and right after the Squip happened. 

He doesn't have that many of those. 

A lot of Michael’s social media accounts bit the bullet while he was trying to stop the Squipocolypse, and once he finally did nobody was in the best of places. The websites that people used to post pictures have changed in the last five years, and most of the Squad has become more cautious about posting images online, thanks some of the scarier rumors on the Network. 

But Michael gets Jenna to send him some old snaps that she screen shotted back in the day, and he gets his moms to send him some other photos. Those will probably be useful in some way, but how?

Time to be methodical!

So, here's a timeline of Michael’s life from Junior Year onward: 

**Beginning of Junior Year:** Things are cool! All Michael needs in life is music, slushies, video games, and his best buddy. He's got those things! Rad!

 **Mid-September:** Okay, fuck. 

**Late September:** Super fuck. 

**October:** Helllllll 

**The Play:** *anime boy with butterfly meme* Is this evil mind control robot apocalypse?

 **After the Play:** Jeremy was in a coma, so shit was still pretty bad. 

**And then…:** Maybe Jeremy is onto something with the whole outward spiral deal he keeps talking about. He does have a pattern going with freak outs, recovery, and more freak outs. 

**Senior Year:** Breaking News: Local Boy Michael Mell has so little experience with friendship that he can't tell the difference between that and dating, and somehow ends up in a three way relationship involving a girl despite definitely being gay. 

**Senior Year:** But it's fine. They work it out. Coolio

 **College:** PROBLEMS (lol bye jer rip twu wuv)

 **College (post Jeremy):** Fine 💔

 **College (cont.) :** na na na na na 🎉Rebound Time 🎉

 **College (cont) :** Studying 📚

 **College (cont) :** Objectively speaking, this is Michael at his best. This is Michael thriving and being a normal person (except for the thing with the Network. That's a bit… much)

 **College (cont) :** Let's obsess over the Network, shall we? 

**College (finale) :** hey look a degree nice 

**post college :** moms are the best but it's hard to go back to the nest and that must be confessed (chirp chirp)

 **Crane Street House Part 1 :** Christine Canigula: Not Michael’s girlfriend, but absolutely his family. 

**Crane Street House Part 2 :** Jeremy Heere: Necessary and welcome. Not Michael’s family ~~unless they get married~~ , but Michael’s got a certain kind of feeling about him. 

**Crane Street House Part 3 :** Work sucks, emotions are suck ass, and Christine (who has always been okay) is not okay, even though she goes back to acting mostly okay less than 24 hours after professing not to be. 

**The Future :** Unknown 

 

And that's it. That's the info Michael has to work with. What he needs to figure out is as follows: 

1️⃣ What is going on with Christine?   
2️⃣ What does he want to do about his feelings for Jeremy?   
3️⃣ What is going on with Michael himself? 

Armed with the gathered photos, and those questions, Michael begins his investigation. 

 

————————————-

 

1️⃣

**Introduction**

Photos of Jeremy and Michael from the second half of junior year show a haunted and hollow version of Jeremy. His eyes don't focus the way that they did before. He smiles like he's got a firing squad ordering him to do so… or maybe like he'll get shocked if he doesn't. On bad days, he wears that terrible Eminem t-shirt. Not everything is unfamiliar, but everything is bad. There's a photo of him drinking a slushie with Michael, and another of him looking up from his Nintendo Switch and giving the photographer (presumably Jenna) the finger. The slushie and the Switch look like props in a pantomime. 

Photos of Jeremy and Michael from the second half of junior year show a desperate and shell-shocked version of Michael. He's full of laughter and smiles, sure. He's all over Jeremy. He’s brazenly and deliberately ridiculous. He's stopped looking like a carefree kid, and started looking like somebody who was trying to hold another person together with glue and duct tape (but not in a kinky way. Also, metaphorically. Michael has never used literal glue or duct tape on Jeremy). 

Photos of Michael, Jeremy, _and_ Christine from the second half of junior year are okay. The three player pictures are way less bogus and traumatic than the two player ones. 

Christine added a much needed extra element to Michael and Jeremy’s damaged dynamic. When Michael wasn't up for talking, and Jeremy needed a friendly voice, Christine could always fill in the silences with talk of plays and musicals, but also everything else under the sun. When Michael longed for a friend to support him and watch his back, but knew Jeremy wasn't up to being what he used to be, Christine took on that role. Jeremy would always be Michael’s best friend, but Christine became the one who he could turn to. 

Scouring the photos, Michael searches for any sign that the arrangement wasn't equitable. He misses how other people are feeling sometimes. He knows how Jeremy shows his emotions from an entire lifetime spent watching him, the same way he knows that gray skies foretell rain and a dog wagging its tail is happy and wants to be pet. There's a process. It's predictable. There are cues that can be learned and rules about how to react. 

Christine's body language is not Jeremy’s. She rambles, which is supposed to mean that she's happy and likes stuff. She breaks into laughter at odd times, which is supposed to mean she's happy and finding the magic in life. She gets in Michael’s physical space because she likes him. She’s brimming with weird noises and big gestures because those things mean joy— don't they?

But Christine's body language is not Jeremy’s, and her thought processes are not Michael’s.

It's sort of like how if a person takes a cat’s tail twitch to mean the same as a dog’s tail wag, they're liable to get bit. Not that Michael thinks that his friends are like cats, or dogs, or any sort of animals. Using analogies are a good way to make sense of the world, until they become over simplified and begin to reek of unfortunate implications. Like if Michael says Christine is bright like the sun, does it mean that he sees her as a ball of burning celestial gas that will someday engulf the earth? If he says that she is as swooshy as the ocean, does that mean that he also thinks she is full of sharks? If he compares her to 7Up Gold because she's cool and rare, does it also mean he thinks she's rancid and may cause vomiting?

**Body**

Michael resolves to ask Christine more about how she's feeling. He begins this the day after her big breakdown. He's just gotten back from work, and she's not at work because she doesn't have a job. Michael is at the level of Best Buy saturation where he doesn't want to talk to anybody, but he knocks on Christine's door with a slushie he got her on the way home, and Christine lets him in. They sit down on her bed, which is made. This is new. 

Christine stirs the slushie with her straw, not quite meeting Michael’s eyes. Still, she's wearing clean clothes, and her hair has been brushed. She hasn't spent the day wallowing, at least not in the way that both Michael and Jeremy are prone to when the going gets tough. 

“Did you talk to the Network shrink?” Michael asks. 

“Yeah.” 

“Was it helpful?” 

“Maybe I overreacted. Maybe this isn't a breakdown, and I'm taking resources from people who need it more.” 

“What makes you say that?” 

“She asked a lot of questions about whether or not I'm suicidal, and I'm not. Not even a smidge. Scientists say the first person to live to be 150 has already been born. I hope that person’s me. I wanna live to see flying cars— No, wait! Teleporters. That'd be cool.” She offers Michael a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. 

“You don’t need to want to be dead to need help.” 

“I guess I just didn't realize that getting Squipped had bothered me at all. I came through it alright. I didn't have to undergo months of psychological torture like Jeremy and Rich did. It just didn't seem like this big thing, until all at once I got it into my head that maybe it was, and then _kablam_ it was huge! Enormous! Too big to deal with. And I couldn't deal with it.” 

As Christine speaks she gesture like she is miming an explosion, and finishes it all off by slumping back against the headboard of the bed. 

“If it makes you feel any better, sometimes I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and my stomach just sinks ‘cause I start thinking about this one time Jeremy called me a loser while he was squipped.” 

Christine cocks her head to the side, eyebrows squishing together. “You call yourself a loser all the time.” 

“Right? It was a weird time. I'm not gonna blame you for getting upset about it, when I never even had a Squip, and I still get upset about it like all the time. Besides, you didn't have control of your body. There were a few seconds there where even I thought something bad was coming.” 

“Jeremy’s not like that.” Christine covers her face with her hands. “But if his Squip had had just a little more control, it wouldn't’ve mattered what he was like.” 

Michael doesn't say anything. He's wondering if he’s gone too far. 

“I think my choices have all been sort of off since then,” Christine says. “Like dating Jeremy and semi-dating you. It was fun and all, but I didn't want to date before I took the Squip. I'd had my thing with Jake, and I just wanted to be done with it for a while. One of the things I talked about with the psychologist is how to make my own choices, and tune the Squip out as white noise. She'll have the right ideas sometimes, and others she won't, but that doesn't matter. I need to separate out my own ideas and trust them. Doing the opposite of what she asks me to do is still letting her have influence.” 

“That's smart.” 

“I can't believe I lost my job.” 

“Yeah.” 

“You’re gonna have to let me wallow in that one for a while.” 

Michael tries to smile, but it comes out wrong. If Christine doesn't have a job, rent is going to be an issue, but Michael also doesn't want to push her. Luckily, Christine sees his expression.

“On an emotional level, I mean. On an employment level, I've applied to six jobs already today. I'll take what I can get. Maybe I’ll even find something that I don't need to think about when I'm not at work, not that I minded. I just hope the kids are okay. I hope they find a really good instructor for them, who always knows what to do.” 

“Always knowing what to do sucks,” says Michael. “Being messy and human is in. The kids were lucky to have had you.”

**Conclusion**

Maybe delayed PTSD or something, or maybe just a really bad day. Michael will be on the look out, ‘cause Christine is important and he cares about her. 

————————————-

2️⃣

**Introduction**

Those prom pictures are really something. They break from the overarching theme of sadness and dysfunction that characterizes the post Squip pictures. They’re also hella romantic. 

Looking at that one picture, the one of Jeremy dancing with Michael, is a sensory experience. Michael remembers the uncomfortable stiffness of his rented suit, how each seam seemed to rub against his skin in just the wrong way, but also how this cumulated in a general oversensitivity to touch that made Jeremy’s hands on his lower back and Jeremy’s warm, damp breath against his neck a good kind of maddening and a good kind of electric. Though a bit of Christine's perfume had clung to Jeremy’s skin, mostly he'd just smelled like his house, cheap deodorant, and pressed fabric. There’d been a song playing, something overdone— Moon River. There'd been lights. Lights in technicolor. Other people and other bodies, too. Enjoyment of the moment, but hopes they'd finish the night somewhere familiar and intimate, Jeremy’s room, probably. Maybe Michael’s. It'd been Michael’s in the end. 

Michael closes his laptop, sits up straight. He takes off his glasses. He rubs his eyes. The picture is still there behind his closed lids, like the afterglow of those tacky school dance lights. There have been millions of moments between Jeremy and Michael that were less manufactured and less cliche than slow dancing at their high school prom. At the very least, if Michael’s gonna give in to his emo side, he'd do better to fixate on something with some soul to it, not something that could be interchanged with a scene out of a bland teen movie. 

The thing that gets Michael is the suit, though. It'd been so _so_ scratchy. It'd been borderline too much, especially with all those people everywhere, and no hoodie, and no headphones, and then Jeremy had been the one to catch on to all that before it stopped being fun, and they'd gone home, to Michael’s room, which was Michael’s but frequently Jeremy’s too, and they'd been together, and he'd felt understood. 

The bed Michael is sitting on now is his, but also Jeremy’s. Just on alternating nights, ‘cause that's fair and not overly intimate. It's bed sharing in a bro kinda way, as is appropriate for their situation. 

They've lost so much. 

**Body**

It's too bad that they've stopped the photo recreation thing. Leaving off at middle school is leaving off at a low point, not that Michael noticed at the time. He's good at not noticing when things are going to shit. Like middle school was a low point (for Jeremy) , pre-squip was a low point (for Jeremy), post-squip was a low point (for Jeremy), and college was a mega fucking low point (for Jeremy). At no point, no matter how low, did Michael catch on before it was too late. 

Jeremy hopefully isn't at a low point now. Is Michael? If so, how did that happen? Michael doesn't _do_ low points. He's a man of relaxation and cheeritude, only occasionally interrupted by crappy interludes in which he briefly self destructs. Michael isn't built for sustained unhappiness, which just goes to show that the feelings eating at him have got to be something else. 

Michael goes to work every day. 

He spends more time on the Network, but nothing much is happening. 

He sleeps in the places that Jeremy sleeps, not that a lot of sleep is happening. 

He goes to work every day. 

He's in the back room defragging a Toshiba for somebody who has never defragged a thing in their life, while Creepy Manager sits behind him, keeping him company. He's brought coffee again, the smell of which Michael is rapidly beginning to associate with discomfort and unwanted advances. He'd like to bury his face in the keyboard and breathe in that instead. Michael loves the smell of computer keys, even if intellectually he knows they're crawling with germs ‘cause people touch them with their hands. 

The hardest part of Creepy Manager breathing down Michael’s neck isn't even fending off his advances at this point. It's the exhaustion of having to pretend not to be the kind of person who sniffs keyboards. Like, that might be a turn-off, and that'd be good, but Michael also needs to come off as normal enough to remain employable. 

“You seem out of sorts,” says Creepy Manager. 

“Cool. I'm not.” 

“You seem like you could use some help unwinding after work.” 

Michael shrugs, and shifts in his seat. The defragging process is taking forever. 

“You know,” Creepy Manager continues, “when you want to move up in a company, or simply gain a more suitable assignment, cultivating relationships with the people you work with is key.” 

Another shrug. 

**Conclusion**

Jeremy is inconsistent. He could leave at any moment. 

————————————-

3️⃣

 **Introduction**

Michael has gone without Jeremy during exactly three periods of his life: infancy up to the day before starting preschool, the Squip incident, and college. 

Out of those times, only the Squip Incident was consistently bad. Michael was, by all accounts, a happy and well cared for baby. He doesn't remember a ton about that. If he really strains, he can conjure up an image of the Newfoundland dog his moms had, and since that dog died when he was three, that means that Michael’s got at least one pre-Jeremy memory. 

Or maybe he doesn't. 

Maybe he's just remembering the dog from early family photos that he's seen. That's what photos are for. They make you remember stuff you don't truly remember. 

Unlike photos from high school, photos from college are easily found. Not like it was that long ago. Only a few months. God. Swiping through them on his phone, Michael sees someone who knew how to have fun. Classes weren't as overwhelming as work, ‘cause college professors weren't demanding a fake ass customer service demeanor from Michael, and he'd worked out a few accommodations here and there to ease the way forward. Besides, he'd been okay getting Cs in a few classes, even Ds sometimes. It was all chill as long as he passed. Having a meal plan had also been cool, as had being one of the few people who liked crappy cafeteria food. 

As for friends, Michael’s college social group had existed, something which came as a shock to anybody from high school who never expected him to meet anyone if not through Jeremy. They'd been nice. Low key. Mostly confirmed homogays. Like, they played D&D sometimes, or smoked, or drank. No loud parties, either. A lot of it went down in the quad, which was idyllic. A lot went down in Michael’s room, ‘cause during freshman year (after Jeremy vacated) he’d had a roommate free double, and by the time sophomore year hit, doing stuff in Michael’s place was already second nature. 

Michael hasn't been in touch with any of his college friends since Jeremy moved in. Maybe that's what's going wrong. He's falling into old habits of focusing on Jeremy at the exclusion of others, except for Christine in this case, and the Network, but it's not like any of that is precisely _normal_. 

So Michael sends a quick message to his college group chat, to let everyone know he's alive. A few people chime back that they are alive too. Good for them! Scrolling up to look at the updates he hasn't been paying attention to, Michael finds that his buddy Alex got a job teaching English in South Korea, his buddy Dave learned how to drink vodka with his eye, and his buddy Leo completed nanowrimo. One of Michael’s other friends recently shared the Broghurt commercial video. Memes abound. All in all, a good break from Michael’s current life, except it's not like Michael can exactly fuck off to Vermont to hang with these people. That'd be going backwards in life. So is living with Christine and Jeremy, but in a paradoxical backwards is actually forwards kinda way. 

Then Kevin dms Michael. He and Michael may’ve given up on dating, but as a previous boyfriend, he's got private convo privileges. Kevin’s signed up for a temp agency. He's got a maybe girlfriend. He and Michael don't talk about missing each other. Michael is so resigned to Kevin’s absence from his life that he _doesn't_ miss him. Maybe he misses some of the things they used to do, though. Maybe that's one of the reasons he's getting preoccupied with Jeremy (or maybe it's the stubble that Jeremy keeps growing and shaving off, or maybe it's the poise that Jeremy has been gaining since he started playing with the camera his dad got him…)

At any rate, there are things that Michael misses doing. 

**Body**

Sometimes it's better not to read the body of a paper. Everything important is in the introduction and conclusion. The rest is just BS to fill up space. 

Christine has self-destructive tendencies, as shown by the fact that she didn't clean her room for months, and let the leaking water situation go on so long that she now has a maybe permanent mold problem on her wall. She gets a waitressing job. She's gone from hating the Broghurt commercial to actively trying to make it go _more_ viral, in hopes that some Broadway director will see headline gold in the phrase ‘Broghurt Advertisement Girl Plays Title Role in Sunday in the Park with George’ (or something like that). 

Jeremy has _mega_ self-destructive tendencies. They're on hold at the moment, but he's still the same person who once swallowed a super computer that changed his entire brain chemistry. 

Maybe it's Michael’s turn to try something self-destructive. Smoking too much and staying up all night on the Network while having an unsustainable work schedule don't count, because those are all survival things. What Michael really needs to do is pick something that won't contribute to household finances or help push back the looming technological apocalypse. If he's gonna make a bad decision, he's gotta make it really and truly bad. 

He agrees to after work drinks with Creepy Manager. 

It's sort of like, he hasn't done anything with anyone in a while, and it’ll get some shit out of his system. 

It's also sort of like he suggests the idea at two AM via text while high as balls. 

And it's sort of like? Inevitable? Yeah. That's the word for it. 

Work starts good that day. Manager Creepy puts Michael in the back room, doing tech stuff. Some of Michael’s coworkers are almost always in the back room doing tech stuff, and that's what he was hired for. There's no reason he should be out on the floor as often as he is, unless somebody is trying to wear him down. 

His hands go still on the computer he's got opened up, checking for water damage. 

That makes a lot of sense. A cruel amount. The only thing worse than being a peon in a capitalist hellscape is being one that's being actively manipulated and pushed beyond his limits. He's such an idiot. The computer tower stands open before him, a maze of incomprehensible circuitry. His mouth is dry and he hasn't got the time or space to think. He pushes his hair out of his face, and tries to breathe. 

He makes it to the end of the day, and Creepy Manager’s car. He's been messing with his hair so much that he probably looks like he's been electrocuted. He wants his headphones. Last night he wanted to be kissed, by literally anybody. If Satan himself had appeared in a puff of smoke and offered to pin Michael up against his car and… 

Well, that would be preferable to tonight’s situation, at least. 

“You’re a natural at tech work,” Creepy Manager is telling Michael, as he drives. “Smart. Relentlessly efficient. I'll have to put that in my quarterly report.” 

Michael rubs his hands against his knees. 

“I can be rather relentless myself,” creeps the creepinator creepily. 

Michael raises his eyebrows at his manager. He can't muster a thumbs up sign. Then he clears his throat. He can take charge of this. He can force some dry conversation, pretend he thought this was one of those professional buddy hang outs (… which he initiated at two AM in a sloppy, typo-ridden text). 

“You write… a lot of… reports?” Michael manages. 

“You’re ambitious,” says Creepy Manager. “Keeping your eyes on the prize, I see.” 

“I mean. Um. That's gotta be stressful, writing reports on everyone quarterly. I bet corporate doesn't even read them. One of my science teachers back in college wouldn't read our papers aside from the introductions and conclusions. You just had to fill the body up with words. You know, nonsense in Times New Roman. The body didn't count for anything.” 

**Conclusion**

Not a lot happens between Michael and Creepy Manager, except that the tenth or so time that Michael shifts away from his touch, he storms out, leaving Michael to pay for both of their drinks. Since he left his car at Best Buy, and he's too hammered to walk in a straight line to the bathroom, let alone the six miles he'd need to get himself home, Michael calls an uber. 

He gets back to the Crane Street house in one piece. Maybe he throws up in the stairwell. The details are kinda fuzzy. He goes to his room, and collapses in bed, only to hear a soft grunt as his body falls into another body. 

“Michael?”

Michael scrunches his eyes shut. His glasses are digging into the bridge of his nose, and Jeremy has the bed tonight. 

“You okay?” Jeremy asks. 

“Yeah. I'll get up.” 

(In Michael’s inebriated state, it comes out more like _yall ge’up_.) 

“Dude, you don't have to. Just roll over a little?” 

Michael does. He rolls off Jeremy and onto his back, arms spread out, and eyes on the ceiling. Jeremy leans over him. He's got two heads and four very concerned eyes. 

“Are you okay?” Jeremy asks. 

Michael shrugs. 

“Never mind. I'll grab you some water.” 

Jeremy does. He helps Michael drink it, helps him get off his glasses and shoes, and helps him make sure he's got his wallet and phone. 

“You can have the bed tonight.” 

As Jeremy gets up, Michael grabs his hand. 

“We can both have the bed tonight?” 

Michael doesn't answer. 

“Look,” says Jeremy, “I really need you to tell me something here, because I'm okay holding hands if you want, but I don't want to like invade your personal….” 

Fade to black, but when Michael wakes up in the morning, it's in the weirdest imaginable position. 

There he is, spread out across the bed, head pounding, the taste of drink still in his mouth, and his hand hanging off the edge. There Jeremy is, asleep upright on the floor, propped against the bed frame, with a blanket wrapped around him, and his head brushing against Michael’s fingers. There's Tylenol and more water on the bedside table, and Michael feels a rush of tenderness that Jeremy would be so careful not to cross any potential boundaries, while at the same time being _there_. 

Michael sits up to take the pills Jeremy left him. Jeremy stirs, rubbing her eyes.   
“Dude, come on up,” Michael whispers, voice scratchy. 

“You sure?” 

“Yeah, man. It's gotta be hella uncomfortable down there.” 

———————  
💗🛋💗

The next night, it's Michael's turn for the couch, because last night he had the bed. It's also Jeremy’s turn for the couch, because last night he had the bed too. They figure this out after Christine turns in for the night, and they're both sitting there well into the early morning hours, Michael scrolling the Network, Jeremy reading a textbook as his eyes droop, and both of them waiting for the other to leave so the day can be over. 

Their eyes meet, and Jeremy shoots Michael a sheepish grin. “You can have the bed,” he says. “I had it for most of the night before you got in.” 

“Dude, no. You slept on the floor. I owe you the bed tonight.” 

“Yeah, but I totally had it more hours than you did. I'm not taking it.” 

“Well, neither am I.” 

Jeremy looks up at Michael, then away. He goes back to his homework. Michael returns his attention to his computer. 

“Why’re you on the Network all night every night?” Jeremy asks. 

“You know why.” 

“Maybe, but I don't think it's good for you. I wish you’d lie down and get some sleep.” 

Michael is about to make a retort, something joking, about how sleep is for the weak, but Jeremy is staring strangely at a spot on the wall. A couple seconds pass. Jeremy grabs his phone to photograph the spot. So they have a visitor. Michael can only imagine what the Squip is saying. Maybe that Michael’s preoccupation with saving the world is Jeremy’s fault, or maybe that everything would be better if Jeremy died. 

“Hey Jer?” 

Jeremy lowers his camera, and turns to Michael. 

“I'd like it if you lied down with me. You cool with that?” 

Jeremy nods. 

The couch is a lot smaller than the bed. Even after joining Michael in the bed that morning, Jeremy had kept a healthy distance between them. There's no option for that now. So Michael puts down his computer and lies down, and Jeremy curls up next to him, resting his head in the crook of his neck, and Michael wraps his arms around Jeremy, ‘cause there’s no room to do anything else. 

The next night they share the bed, and the night after that the couch, and then it's back to the bed again. It's not like when they were dating. It's not like when they were together. It's a lot more like the sleepovers they had before any of that happened, except with a certain knowledge that things _have_ happened between them, and (at least for Michael) the aching realization that things could happen again, if he wasn't so scared of getting hurt. 

They’re on their third bed-share, and their fifth total night together, when Jeremy announces that they need to talk. 

A lump comes to Michael's throat. 

“Not about us,” Jeremy hastens to clarify. “I get that this is totally normal and platonic, and I'd never want to ruin it, though… um… like maybe we can take the couch out of the equation, ‘cause it's super uncomfortable.” 

Michael relaxes a little bit. “Okay. Fine. No more couch.” 

They're both lying on their side against the pillow, their foreheads all but touching. Jeremy traces the pattern on the bedspread with his finger, then pauses. He reaches for Michael’s hand. 

“I'm worried about you,” Jeremy admits. 

“Me?” 

“Yeah.” 

“I'm the most okay person here,” Michael reminds him. How can he not be? He's the only one in the house who has never had his brain taken over by a sadistic robot. Christine only just had a nervous breakdown over that, and Jeremy’s been a mess for years. It's not like Rich didn't tell Michael how bad Jeremy got after dropping out of college. That's something Jeremy could always go back to, especially if Michael ever isn't okay enough to look out for him. 

“I'm not so sure about that,” Jeremy says. He rubs his thumb against Michael’s palm as he speaks. “Christine figured out she had a problem, and she's getting help. I've been feeling good lately. You _haven't_ been feeling good, have you?”

Michael sighs. “We’ve been through this. It's just my job.” 

(It's a wonder he hadn't gotten fired, considering his Creepy Manager misadventures. Manger hasn't said a word to him since, but he's always out on the floor these days.)

“I think you should quit.” 

“Right. And we’ll just nicely ask our landlord to reduce our rent by half.” 

“You’d still have the LGBT center job. I could get a part time job.” 

Michael almost spits out something about how _clearly_ Jeremy is not equipped to deal with that, but he stops himself. He's not going to take Jeremy trying to help him, and say something cruel in response. 

“You’re doing good with school and your pictures,” Michael says, hoping that Jeremy will be able to infer that school and his pictures are enough.

“Right! So maybe I'd do good with a part time job. At least it would mean I could throw in some more rent money, and you’d have time to find something else. Then I could quit if I’m really struggling, or keep going if I'm okay. You don't know what a relief it’d be to do more normal things, and be okay.” 

Michael doesn't answer. He doesn't want to tell Jeremy that no, he can't do normal things. Maybe Jeremy can. Michael is starting to doubt his own ability in that respect. Lots of people view customer service work as the lowest form of employment, something easy that even a fifteen year old can pull off. So how is it okay that Michael, at 23 and with a degree, is floundering as bad as he is?

“Do you want to quit Best Buy?” Jeremy asks.   
“At least I'm _used_ to it,” Michael says, not looking at Jeremy. “What if the only other gig I can find is another retail thing, only I have to waste months learning how to deal with a completely different store? If you think I'm weird and stressed out now, check out what goes on during new employee training week.”

“Okay,” says Jeremy, “so you like routine. I get that. At least you probably wouldn't get hassled at the new place. And you could give yourself a few days off before you started looking for the new place. I know how things build up with you. They're building. Will you at least think about it?” 

Michael lets out a heavy breath. “I'll think about it.” 

 

————


	12. Chapter 12 - Michael

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: The version of Best Buy in this fic is not based on any really Best Buy. This is fiction. Also I can't believe I just wrote a disclaimer in 2019.

Michael _does_ think about quitting Best Buy. He talks about it with people. Seems like Jeremy has up and gotten uncannily wise, but the ideas he and Michael come up with when bouncing thoughts off each other at the exclusion of everybody else tend more towards stuff like _let's open a pizza restaurant that specializes in really weird flavors, like mayonnaise pickle Dorito_ and less towards reasonable and adult life choices. So Michael tells his moms that he's thinking about quitting his job, and why, and they talk about how his fear of breaking from routine might be an autism thing, and how he needs to get his manager super fired, whether he leaves the company or not. Michael talks to Mrs. Hameln over the Network, and she digs up the forms he'd need to submit in order to report his manager for sexual harassment. She's adamant about how smart Michael is, and how he needs to be somewhere that appreciates his skills. 

Michael talks to his boss at the LGBT center, who says she can put him on an extra day each week, if that’ll help. He talks to Christine, who says she has one really important audition coming up soon, but she can leave off some of the others and pick up more restaurant hours for a while so Michael can get his life sorted. 

“You always look out for Jeremy and me,” is how she puts it. “We can look out for you too. We’re a team, right?” 

Jeremy applies at some shops within walking distance. He doesn't have a lot of options, without a car, a degree, or any experience. He's a waiter for four hours before being unceremoniously fired for dropping too many things, but then he gets a call from the grocery store on the walk home from that, and is invited to bag other people’s shit for $8.85 an hour. It's something. 

Michael gives in his two weeks notice, and those harassment forms. Five days later, he's allowed to leave a Best Buy for good. Christine brings back a plate of celebratory mozzarella sticks from her restaurant. As Michael, Christine, and Jeremy eat them, they formulate their game plan. 

Michael once told Jeremy that he doesn't want work to be his passion, but he's not sure. Maybe he just doesn't want to be disappointed. The expectation that he won't like his job is an expectation that's easily met. Anything else is going to take effort, and it's not that Michael’s lazy, but his effort is something he carefully saves up for the things and people most important to him. 

They decide that Michael should take two days to relax and play video games. He hasn't had a day off since the day he stayed home to help Jeremy move in. On the third day, he should still take it easy, but dust off his resume and LinkedIn. On the fourth, he should start a massive wave of applications, focusing on places that are cool. He’ll have time to apply to the suck ass jobs a bit later. 

And that's what Michael does. He applies to normal stuff that he's qualified for, like the computer repair and salvage place in town. He applies to things he's not qualified for, like the Science and Industry museum, for which he attaches a probably embarrassing cover letter about how he's obsessed with their exhibit on old TVs and gaming consoles. He tries to get Jeremy to talk him _out_ of going in for a job at the local aquarium, to no avail. 

“Dude, you’ve got to do it!” Jeremy encourages, voice gone higher with excitement. “There are sharks!” 

“You’re the only person I know who’d put being surrounded by sharks as a possible job benefit.” 

“Shut up. Sharks are the coolest.” 

Michael smiles at Jeremy, and pushes back the desire to grab him, or ruffle his hair, or make their teasing physical somehow. “Sharks _are_ mega cool, right up until the point where they eat you.” 

“Come on. It's not like the job description says shark diver. What is the job description, anyway?” 

“Keeping aquarium filtration systems in working order, which I know nothing about.” 

“How different could that be from fixing computers?” 

Michael shrugs. “Wetter, I guess.” 

Suffice to say, Michael is not called in for an interview at the aquarium. Nobody contacts him from the computer salvage place, or the Science and Industry museum. He talks about it over the Network, with Mrs. Hameln. 

cartoon-allstarz: kinda feel like I'm naive for trying 

PiedPiper1958: Now that is not the optimistic young man I know…

cartoon-allstarz: ironic nihilism is the new optimism. haven't you heard? 

PiedPiper1958: You should talk to yourself the way you do   
wilde-empress337…

cartoon-allstarz: zomg self best nerdy cover letter eva 11! am i hired yet??

PiedPiper1958: sigh of disapproval… 

PiedPiper1958: 😱(sighing)

cartoon-allstarz: nm i do think her writing is legit good. I'm being genuine there. I'm just not an achiever is all. I'm a being-satisfied-with-what-I-haver. Which is fine. Nothing wrong with that. I'm trying to do shit I'm not used to here.

PiedPiper1958: You’re someone who solves problems and overcomes obstacles… 

cartoon-allstarz: when i have to be. 

PiedPiper1958: You spend a lot of time on this Network trying to solve other people’s problems… It is not an obligation…

cartoon-allstarz: I'm in mega deep. 

PiedPiper1958: Do you wish you were not?

cartoon-allstarz: I like knowing what's up. Makes it less scary that all my friends are hydrangea brained, plus don't think i could rlly deal with knowing an army of evil AI is trying to take over the world and not do anything. 

PiedPiper1958: I see… 

cartoon-allstarz: nm I’ll hurry up and find a day job, keep fighting robots by night, keep going

————-

The truth is, since he started sleeping with Jeremy, Michael is spending less time fighting robots by night. He's not getting that thing where his brain hurts after work, ‘cause he's not going to work, and so he's also not having that thing where it takes him until evening to come into himself again, and he has to put off sleep in order to have time to just be Michael. Additionally, he's not finding himself preoccupied at two AM about whether or not Jeremy is okay, and whether or not Jeremy is engaged in a battle of self with his Squip. Instead, Jeremy is right there, and Michael can watch how he's engaged with sleeping. 

At the start of college, Jeremy was prone to nightmares, horrible ones about being shocked, molested, and ridiculed. These days, Jeremy wakes up to take phone pictures sometimes, but it's rare. Mostly he just sleeps. 

Michael asks him about it one morning, lying next to him in bed. 

“Do you still get the dreams?” he asks. 

Jeremy pulls a face. “Last night I dreamed about bagging groceries.” 

“Fuck. Sorry.” 

A shrug. “It's not a bad dream. It's boring! Like, I bag stuff in real life for a few hours and nothing happens, then I dream about doing it and nothing happening. They're probably the most peaceful dreams I've had in a while.” 

Michael taps Jeremy’s temple. “Does it harass you? When you’re at work, I mean.” 

“No more than usual. The only bad thing is that I can't react to it at all. It's like that game we played when we were kids, where we did all that dumb shit and the first person to laugh loses, only it's not trying to make me laugh.” 

Michael frowns. 

“You’re giving me a look like you expect me to screw this up sooner rather than later.” 

“It's fine if you do! Christine and I will be there.” 

Jeremy rolls his eyes. “Maybe it's good thing that I'm doing a job, a hobby, and school. Dad is stoked. He talks about me being a bag boy at the grocery store like I've gotten elected president or something.” 

“Okay.” 

Jeremy goes quiet, and then… 

“Do you have low expectations of me, Michael? I mean… like… do I think I'll be able to do something?” 

“Of course, man. You _are_ doing stuff. And whether you keep doing that stuff, have to cut back on some of it, or move on to do bigger stuff, I'll still think you’re awesome.” 

“Okay.” 

“Sometimes I wonder if I'm gonna do stuff. Guess I sort of thought that going to college was the pinnacle of human existence, and like, forgot to think about what happens next, and now I'm I'm stuck figuring out where to go from here.” 

“You know who’s going to do stuff?” Jeremy asks. 

“Christine?” 

“Christine.” 

———————

Michael moves on to big retail. He seriously considers McDonald’s, on the basis that the red uniforms are his favorite color, and he's a fan of their fries. Issue is that he's going to have to start paying off student loans soon, and that's not financially sustainable. Also, they're ignoring his application. Christine says it's ‘cause he's over qualified. He applies to a lot of chains at the mall, and takes at least twenty of those dumb personality tests where they ask questions like _is shoplifting okay under certain circumstances_ and _is it acceptable to to come to work drunk_.

(The answers of course being that Michael would not stop a starving man from stealing a loaf of bread, but shoplifting to get a rush is a dick move. The coming to work thing is a hard no, that gets harder if you’re a paramedic or something, and a few degrees less imperative if you’re a radio DJ.) 

He continues to talk it over with Mrs. Hameln. That Network is not the place for employment counseling, but the wonder of it is that it's a little bit of everything that anybody needs it to be. 

PiedPiper1958: You like to help people, do you not? 

cartoon-allstarz: Yeah

PiedPiper1958: You might consider a helping profession… 

cartoon-allstarz: Every profession’s a helping profession. 

PiedPiper1958: Explain… 

cartoon-allstarz: The girl who worked at the 7-11 near my high school used to overfill my slushie cup and tell me fun facts about insects. That's helping. At worst buy i had this lady come in wanting me to extract get her dead dads old photos off his hard drive so she could write his travel memoirs. got her all the travel photos, deleted all the furry porn, cuz I wanted both her and her dad to Rest In Peace. there aren't helping professions, just helping people. 

PiedPiper1958: What are furries? 

cartoon-allstarz: nm

PiedPiper1958: 🤝

PiedPiper1958: (Shaking hands)

PiedPiper1958: What did you imagine yourself doing after graduating college? 

cartoon-allstarz: Living with Jeremy. 

PiedPiper1958: I see… You are living with Jeremy… 

cartoon-allstarz: That I am. 

PiedPiper1958: You are still searching for more… 

cartoon-allstarz: yup. 

————————

Jeremy’s photography is getting better. Actually, everybody has been either taking or looking at a lot of photos, so everybody’s photography is getting better. 

Sometimes, when Jeremy and Christine are at work, Michael goes around the living room and looks at the pictures that line the walls. He's in a lot of them. Sometimes he's making silly faces and gestures. In others, Jeremy caught him in a moment of seriousness, maybe doing stuff on the Network, or lying in bed with the smoke billowing out of his mouth, too tired to have taken his shoes and uniform off. Michael has never once told Jeremy not to take a picture, or refused to pose when asked. That's the common thread across all of Michael’s pictures— the willingness to do anything that Jeremy asked, to let Jeremy have full access to any aspect of Michael he wanted to capture, even the weird, grimey ones, even the times when Michael’s been kinda a loser. 

Christine’s photo recreations have been developed by now, and sit on the shelf, by the fish tank. There's Michael and Jeremy with the toy vacuum, Michael and Jeremy with pencil claws, Michael and Jeremy playing video games, Michael and Jeremy in middle school. Much as Michael hates to admit it, if Jeremy and not Christine had been the one to bring up recreating that stupid prom picture, he would've done it. 

Jeremy’s been stepping up his game a lot lately. It's like he and Michael are playing together again, instead of Michael picking up the slack and pulling Jeremy forward, or else going alone. It's intoxicating. It's like that warm feeling that Michael got the first few times he ever smoked up. Pure dopamine. 

It's a snowy day when Jeremy brings up the wedding.

“I was hoping you'd be my plus one,” he says. He's reddening at the tips of his ears, looking at the wall, not Michael. “Because my family is used to you! I'd like to have you there, and my family is used to you. So! I was hoping you’d come.” 

“Will there be free food?” Michael asks.

Jeremy’s shoulders relax. His back goes not quite so uncomfortably straight. “So much free food. Also, my family is used to you.” 

“Figured.” 

“I'll be working a lot of the day. Taking pictures. Do you think they’ll be okay?” 

Michael makes a grand gesture around the room, at the photos lining the walls. “Are you kidding? They’ll be amazing. You’re an artist, man.” 

Jeremy smiles, in that cautious way of his. He jams his hands in his pockets, and then removes them, clearly working hard not to fidget. 

“Maybe you should practice your pictures,” Michael says, as an offer. If he doesn't Jeremy will probably just tell him some more about how his family is used to him, not that Michael would mind, but Jeremy gets anxious if his feedback loops go on for too long. 

“Good idea,” Jeremy agrees. “I haven't taken pictures of snow before, so that’ll be a thing. You wanna come?” 

“I’m in.” 

——————

Michael and Jeremy pass the afternoon walking out towards the Old Mill Building. They don't talk much, but Jeremy takes plenty of pictures. The snow is barely there, hardly a flurry, but it's an excuse. Michael hums to himself. His head is clearer than it's been for a long time. Is this how Jeremy feels after he's had a drink of Mountain Dew Red, and the headache has cleared away, leaving everything Squip free and quiet? Did Michael really let a bad customer service position get to him that much? What kind of a dysfunctional loser is he? 

Now that _is_ a Squip style thought. Michael’s read a million articles on those. It's not as bad as what people who’ve had Squips have to deal with, seeing as there's no physical manifestation to make it more real, but Michael has a good idea what kinds of ideas his Squip would yank to the forefront, if he ever got one. 

Michael hums louder. 

And Jeremy takes his hand. 

—————————

When Michael gets home, his computer desktop is all blown up with a million messages from the Network. Something’s gotta be wrong. Something big. He opens them up and scrolls through them. 

PiedPiper1958: I have learned what a furry is…

PiedPiper1958: LOL (Laughing Out Loud)

PiedPiper1958: 🙀😼😹

Michael covers his face with his hands. This is worse than he'd ever expected. He forces himself to continue reading, peering through the gaps between his fingers. 

PiedPiper1958: I believe you are discussing a phenomenon exemplified in Disney’s Zootopia, are you not? 

PiedPiper1958: That is not what I am here to talk with you about today…

(‘Oh,’ Michael thinks. ‘Thank god for small favors.’)

PiedPiper1958: Through reviewing your logs I have found that you spend six to thirteen hours a day on our Network… 

PiedPiper1958: You have been a valuable member since the beginning, with your discovery of Summer Sun…

PiedPiper1958: As you know, we are for the most part a group of volunteers, with the exception of some specialists… 

PiedPiper1958: I believe you qualify as a specialist, despite not having any academic speciality…

PiedPiper1958: We gain and lose members quickly… 

PiedPiper1958: You have been here since the beginning, and are aware of all we know… 

PiedPiper1958: If you could compile it into a friendly and easy to digest format…

PiedPiper1958: While continuing to watch for and do your part in containing future outbreaks… 

PiedPiper1958: We would be willing to pay you what we can…

PiedPiper1958: We will at least match what you made at “Worst Buy” as you so delightfully call it…

PiedPiper1958: Think it over and get back in touch with me…

————————

Michael thinks it over.

————————

cartoon-allstarz: I’m in.


	13. Chapter 13 - Jeremy

The wedding day dawns. Jeremy sits up in bed, Michael asleep beside him. Michael’s hair is mussed, close and touchable, though Jeremy restrains himself for once. Michael’s face is smushed into the pillow, and his laptop lies to the right of him. Jeremy had fallen asleep on Michael’s left, curled warmly at his side, listening to the soft click of typing, Network stuff of course. A lot of that happens at night, though Michael’s not staying up as late as he used to when he needed to do that as well as Best Buy. 

Jeremy would never consider the Network relaxing. He's done his best, over the years, to put in some time here and there. There was a kid who he talked through some stuff, back when the whole thing had barely started. It’d made him sick. He’s gone over his own experiences with people who said they needed to know, dredging up things he never wanted to remember. He’s taken advantage of some of the more supportive features the Network offers, and getting to work directly with a psychologist who didn't mistake his Squip visions for run of the mill hallucinations had been useful, but it still put him in a headspace where the Squip was at the forefront of his mind. More often, Jeremy just checks out new symptoms with Michael, who keeps abreast of Network findings and can tell him if something is normal, and do so in as few words and with as little stress as possible. 

That's why Jeremy knows Michael will rock this Network position. He's not always the best at understanding the emotions of others, but he understands the hell out of the specific syndromes and pitfalls that follow a Squip take over, and he's already learned so much about how to deal with them. He’s encouraging, and calm in the face of crazy. And he cares. He cares very much. 

So, right. Jeremy would never term the Network relaxing, but maybe for Michael it is, or at least it's something that's helping him thrive. He loves weird tech stuff. He loves research. He has the drive to help others. He's engaged, and therefore he's happy. 

… Jeremy’s cousin Sarah is engaged too, in the getting ready to get married sense. In a few hours she’ll no longer be engaged, because she’ll be a full fledged wife. Jeremy gets to help record it! He just has to get out of bed and stop pondering Michael first!

Jeremy goes to the drawer, and pulls out his best clothes— a pair of slacks and a suit jacket that his dad got him for this occasion. The suit jacket is lightly used, musty with goodwill smell, but it fits okay, and paying real money when Jeremy almost never does anything fancy doesn't make sense. 

His dad had seen it as a ‘starter suit jacket’ of course, to launch his photography career. Ridiculous, but maybe… 

Michael stirs. 

“Hey man.” 

“Hey.” Michael rubs his eyes. He stretches. He hasn't got his glasses on, which means Jeremy can stare just a little bit without getting caught. 

Jeremy could go back to bed. Leaning into Michael and resting his head on his chest is now permitted at night. Would it be acceptable in the light of day? 

Michael is mumbling something. 

“What was that?” 

“You ready?” 

“I have to shower and get dressed first, but yeah.” 

“You go do that. I'm gonna sleep another five minutes. Slap me or something if I'm not up by the time you get back.” 

“Will do.” 

As Jeremy leaves the room, and heads towards the bathroom, the front door opens. It's Christine, who is remarkably dressed and put together for this time of the morning, which can only mean one thing. 

“Breakfast with Hope?” Jeremy asks. 

“Oh yes.” 

“Romantic?” 

Christine shrugs. From the airiness with which she walks into the kitchen, Jeremy guesses it might be. She has a Tupperware container of something, which she deposits in the fridge. Hope likes to send Christine home with a little extra. 

“To this day, I never know if I want things to be romantic or not,” Christine says. “It's all very exciting is theory, and she _is_ very pretty, and nice. It's a wonderful idea, falling in love, like something from a play, but… Oh! Did I tell you? I got a call back last night for the new Are You Afraid of the Dark musical. It was a 90s TV show. Can you imagine how excited Michael would be if I got into a musical about a 90s TV show? It's different than all those eight million or so musicals about beloved teen movies, because it's a TV show, from Nickelodeon, like Spongebob, but not a cartoon. I do wish the theatre would be a little less movie based. A lot of the shows aren't even trying anymore. They're just relying on nostalgia to put butts in seats. But, no matter. I'm sure Are You Afraid of the Dark will be good, especially if I'm in it. Are you ready for the wedding today?” 

“Totally.” 

Under any other circumstances, Jeremy would ask questions to keep Christine talking, and maybe direct the conversation back to Hope. Christine isn't much for talking relationships. She's more a theatre person, and anybody who falls in love with her will have to get used to that. 

Heading into the bathroom to shower, Jeremy surveys the room. Michael and Christine still share a toothbrush holder, with Jeremy’s brush off to the side, but that seems a lot less significant now that Jeremy and Michael share a bed. They also share a towel rack, with Christine’s towel in a crumpled pile underneath. There's a shelf in the shower, that holds everybody’s shampoos, and washes, and razors, and all that. It's chaotic. It's integrated. There might be a part of Jeremy that's a germaphobe and doesn't want Christine’s soap (that she uses to wash her armpits, among other parts that she'd never give Jeremy permission to think about) on top of his own, but it's symbolic in a way. It means that Jeremy is not an outsider at the Crane Street House, but a full-fledged inhabitant of it, in all its messy glory. He's with Christine and Michael. He's not an invader here, or less than either of them. The last several months have ensured that. 

Jeremy showers, and puts on his clothes. He deliberates over whether or not to shave, and goes with it this time. Michael will just have to deal. 

(And since when is he making decisions about his appearance based on Michael, with whom he is sharing a bed with but not dating?)

Michael is up and dressed by the time Jeremy gets back. He's got on something with stripes and buttons, which he's tugging at as if he doesn't quite like it. 

“You think I need a tie?” Michael asks. 

“You wouldn't want to upstage the groom.” 

“By wearing a tie?” 

“Yeah.” 

“I could throw on a hoodie, and really not upstage him.” 

Jeremy is about to retort, but he stops himself. Michael is looking in the mirror, and Jeremy moves in next to him, so that the glass reflects them both. It's like looking at a picture. For all that Michael doesn't like fancy dress for himself, he can't help fussing over Jeremy. 

“You got your buttons wrong,” Michael points out. 

Jeremy has been known to do that. Piss poor special awareness and all, and he's about to explain that, when he feels Michael’s hands on his neck. 

“Here, it's just the top three,” Michael murmurs, carefully undoing the offending buttons. Jeremy goes still, too warm for the term ‘frozen’, but unwilling to move, lest Michael move too. 

“There,” Michael says, with a crooked smile as he finishes. He's very close. 

What would happen if Jeremy asked him to do it again? Could he find an excuse to change into a different outfit, and make an even bigger mess of dressing himself this time? Is there anything off about Michael’s appearance that he could zero in on, and… 

Jeremy runs his fingers up through Michael’s hair. “It's sticking up everywhere,” Jeremy explains. It's always sticking up everywhere. That's how Michael likes it. Even so, he doesn't move away. He places his finger on Jeremy’s mouth, and Jeremy closes his eyes. 

“You had something right there,” Michael says, lowering his hand, and letting it fall at his side, contact gone. An unlikely story, but Jeremy’s not about to argue. He's in the gutter, wishing he'd forgotten to zip his fly, or do up the button on his pants, or… 

“You with me, bud?” Michael asks. 

“Uh…” Jeremy glances down, then back up at Michael. “Yeah?” 

“Cool. Get your camera packed up, alright? We can leave early and grab pre-wedding donuts on the way.” 

———————-

By necessity, Jeremy and Michael are among the first guests to arrive at the wedding. Jeremy’s supposed to get some photos of Sarah and her bridesmaids before the ceremony starts. He considers leaving Michael with his dad while he does it, then hits upon an idea. 

“Wanna be my assistant and carry my stuff, so you can go where I'm going?” Jeremy asks. 

Michael gives him a mock solute, and they go off to find Sarah. 

Thank god for the dark fabric of Jeremy’s suit jacket, masking the sweat making the shirt underneath cling to his armpits, even in the chilly winter weather. Jeremy’s as nervous as if were the one getting married. That’s not what's going, as he reminds himself in a repeating singsongy mantra in his head about how he's not getting married, not getting married, not getting married… 

_”You never will,”_ says the Squip. 

Jeremy's not getting married, but today marks the completion of something he's been working his ass off to learn, and he really wants to do well. 

“You’ve got this,” Michael says. His words are as perfectly timed to support as anything the Squip has ever said to tear Jeremy down. 

“I've got this,” Jeremy agrees. “This might be big for me,” Jeremy adds in a rush. “I like taking pictures. I was thinking, if this goes well, maybe I could look into switching schools once I've got two years of gen ed credits out of the way, and then go somewhere nearby that offers a photography major and… uh…” 

“Do that?” 

“Right.” 

“I think you should.” 

“Somewhere nearby, though, so I don't have to move.” 

“Look at you, planning two whole years into the future…” 

“Do you ever plan for the future?” 

“Does having a savings account count? No money in it, but it's there. Also, Christine and I paid for a warranty on the fridge. That's almost like investing!” 

“That's not what I meant.” 

“So you’re talking dreams and shit?” 

“Of course.” 

“I think your cousin’s waiting over there.” 

Michael gestures towards a building that looks like cross between a shed and a glass cabin, only a gazillion time more ornate. Maybe there's a name for that place where a bride goes to hang with her bridesmaids before the wedding starts, but Jeremy sure as hell doesn't know it, why would he? The best his mind is supplying him with is “backstage” but that can't be it. Sarah is waving at the doorway. Jeremy and Michael run up to meet her. 

“Jeremy, hey!” she gives him a one armed hug, surprisingly casual for somebody who is wearing a poofy white dress with sequins trailing down the skirt. Sarah is only two years older than Jeremy. They played together when they were little. It doesn't seem that long ago that she and Jeremy were arguing about who would get to teach Michael to play dreidel at his first ever Hanukkah, Jeremy’s argument being that Michael was _his_ friend, and Sarah’s argument being that Jeremy was just a baby while _she_ was a great big second grader. 

Jeremy may not have felt like a baby next to Sarah all those years ago, and that's not exactly how he feels now. He is, however, keenly aware that she's got a master’s degree, a husband, and a good job. She's even got a dog! A two year age difference shouldn't be that much, but Sarah’s reached everybody’s highest expectations, while Jeremy hasn't. 

_She's talking, idiot._

Jeremy clenches his teeth, and does not look over to where the Squip is heckling him. 

“… and the girls are just getting my nails done, and helping me with my hair and make up. We’re all decent, promise. Becca’s in all the way from Arizona, if you can believe it.” 

“I remember Becca,” says Michael. 

“She’ll be glad. Come on inside. I guess you and Jeremy are getting married next?” 

Michael’s eyes widen.

“We’re not…” Jeremy starts to say, but they’re drowned out by a chorus of hellos from inside. Becca is there, also Aunt Esther, and three women who Jeremy doesn't know, and therefore assumes he's not related to. Most of them go back to talking and fussing over Sarah. Aunt Esther pinches Jeremy’s cheek, kisses Michael’s, and scolds Jeremy to stop standing there and hurry up and get his camera ready. 

Jeremy gets pictures of Sarah chatting with one of the girls, as another paints her toenails. He gets pictures of Sarah’s face smushed between those of the two women, who turn out to be her best friends from undergrad. He gets a picture of Becca with her finger to her mouth in an exaggerated hushing gesture, and an irrepressible grin, as she sneaks a chocolate out of the box on the coffee table. He gets a picture of Aunt Esther putting Sarah’s veil on her head. He does not hear what Aunt Esther whispers in Sarah’s ear after she does it, but he gets what he hopes will be a beautiful and tender image of the whispering. 

The best thing about it is how easy it comes. Jeremy’s nerves were similar to the ones he used to get before performing in school plays, but as with that, he's been practicing, and he knows his part. It's a good part for him. It involves fading into the background, observing, capturing moments. It involves letting the story be about other people in a way that doesn't hurt, and letting go of the ways in which his own story has been stressing him out— for a little while, at least. 

——- 

It's a nice ceremony. Jeremy goes through twelve rolls of film. He gets Sarah walking down the bridal path, Sarah and her husband sharing their glass of wine in front of everybody, the flowers, and the smiles, and the mothers of the bride and groom, and the family. He gets the meal and the dancing after. 

Jeremy’s dad adopts Michael for the day. Jeremy regrets not being able to pay a ton of attention to him, after inviting him and all. Michael’s never been one for big events where he doesn't know everybody, and Jeremy would worry, but every time he catches Michael’s eye, Michael gives him a grin or a thumbs up. Looks like he and dad have found a lot to talk about. 

When it's all over, and guests are starting to filter out, Aunt Esther gives Jeremy a hug, and an envelope full of money. 

“You don't need me to do anything else?” Jeremy asks. 

“No, dear, I think we’re fine without you taking photos of the backsides of the departing guests, or Auntie Ruth drunk in the corner. Do take a plate of food, though, and if you sneak a bottle of wine out with you, I won't tell anyone.” She pats Jeremy’s shoulder, and then his cheek. Jeremy thanks her, and goes off to find Michael. 

Aunt Esther needn't have reminded Jeremy to get a plate of food. Michael and his dad have already saved him a huge one.

“You were good out there,” Michael says, and once again Jeremy is reminded of the feeling he used to get from acting. “Totally in the zone.” 

“I just hope I got some good pictures.” 

“These days everyone takes pictures at events like this. She’ll have tons of good pictures, no matter what.” 

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” 

“Hey, I didn't say yours wouldn't be the best! I'm just saying, if you fall in a ditch or get attacked by a dragon, or…” 

“We’re proud of you,” Jeremy’s dad interrupts. 

“Mega proud,” Michael agrees. 

_”That's what they said about you bagging groceries,”_ drawls the Squip. _”And learning how to tie your shoes. When you were eight.”_

“Can you get a picture of me and dad?” Jeremy asks Michael. “I want to remember that I was here too. You can use your phone.” 

“And you can hold your camera!” Jeremy’s dad says. “To commemorate your first photography job.” 

“Dude, what if I get a picture of you getting a picture of your dad.” 

“You think that's too much?” Jeremy asks. 

“No such thing as too much. Come on.” 

Jeremy poses taking a picture of his father, and then his father insists that he pose taking one of Michael, and then Michael grabs a random relative of Jeremy’s to get all three of them together. 

People continue to filter out. Jeremy eats his food, and the wedding party winds down to a successful close. 

————————-

Michael suggests walking around the grounds after everything is over. Might as well enjoy the venue now that Jeremy is done working it. That's not to say that his photographer brain isn't still going full force. He keeps noticing things like trees with picturesque icicles, or the way his and Michael’s shoes look, as they fall into step next to each other. It's like he sees everything differently now that he has this whole photography thing, and he hopes he doesn't seem like a hipster ass dork taking pictures of shoes and icicles, but it's not unusual to have a silly, overly invested phase when first getting into something. The best thing to do is enjoy that first rush without cynicism. That's something Christine told Jeremy, while defending crazy Absolutely Amy fans on the internet, but it applies here, too. 

“Talked to your dad a bunch,” Michael says, hands in his pockets. He's got Jeremy’s camera and stand slung in a bag over his shoulder. 

“Fun.” 

“Told him things with us are getting kinda intense.” 

“Intense?” Jeremy repeats. It's not that he hasn't noticed it. It's that he's been trying not to notice it, and get his hopes up. 

“Come on. Please don't pretend you don't know what I mean.” 

“I know what you mean.” 

They continue to walk. The icicles are still pretty, but also stark. Weddings aside, it's the coldest and deadest part of the year, but spring will come back, and summer eventually. Circular, though not spiraled, and spiraled is what Jeremy is going for. 

He reaches out for Michael’s hand. 

“Are you—” Michael swallows thickly. “You said you wanted to stay, in your two year plan or whatever.” 

Jeremy nods. 

“Is it getting close to being too much yet?” 

Jeremy shakes his head. 

“Will it be?” 

“I don't think I was ready for college the first time. I know I told you I was, but obviously I wasn't, and the stakes were… there were stakes, and they were maybe too high, ‘cause I was trying to do something I wasn't ready for, and I dragged you half way across the country to do it, and just left you there.” 

“You did,” Michael agrees. 

“I'm sorry.” 

“I know.” 

Jeremy chews on his lip. “I don't think I have to quit the bagging thing, but if I do, it won't be the same as quitting college, will it?” 

Michael shakes his head. “Not unless you cross state lines to flee from grocery stores.” 

“I really don't want the photography thing to crash and burn, but sometimes things just _do_.” 

“That's okay.” 

Jeremy grips tighter to Michael’s hand. “I think we should… recreate more photos. The ones where we were dating. I think that maybe we should be together like that again, and make more photos like that. I think we’ve learned a lot since the first time, and we’re better maybe, and I'm not going to just leave you, no matter what else I abandon…” 

Michael stops Jeremy, with a kiss on his lips. “I think that too.” 

“So you’re willing to try?” 

“I'm willing to try.” 

——————

They celebrate with Christine out on the balcony that night. Michael climbs up on the rail, the way that Christine once told Jeremy he never should. 

“It’ll be fine,” Michael insists. “I'll have you the whole time.” 

And so, Jeremy climbs up to sit on the edge, with Michael on one side of him, and Christine on the other. The view from here is beautiful and overwhelming, but he's not afraid he’ll fall. 

They tell Christine about the wedding, and their discussion. She claps her hands, and makes jokes about how ridiculous the whole alternating bed-couch thing was. 

“You had to pick the most complicated way of pretending winding up together again wasn't exactly what you were going for when you entered into this arrangement,” she says. 

“What were you going for?” Jeremy asks. 

“Oh, you know. Cool roommates. Affordable housing. Sticking close to people who bring out the best in me.” 

“Cool roommates, huh?” Jeremy repeats. 

“You can call us cool again if you want,” adds Michael. 

“You’re lucky I'm not the kind of person to push you off this railing right at the start of your budding romance,” Christine says, shooting them a glare that is utterly fake. 

Out of Christine's teasing, one word stands out to Jeremy above all others. 

“We’re lucky to have you,” he says. 

Christine softens at once. “I wasn't planning to get all sentimental tonight, but I'm lucky to have you too.” 

Michael reaches out for Christine's hand over Jeremy's shoulder. “We’re lucky to have each other.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all! 
> 
> If you have made it this far, and would be willing to leave an exclamation point in the comments (!) to let me know you finished the fic , it would mean so much to me just to know that somebody made it to the end. 
> 
> Of course, any thoughts you have on the story would also be vastly appreciated, be they praise, con crit, or incoherent key smashes. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	14. Notes - In Which the Author Goes All Meta About Her Own Fic For 2,000 Words

**Aaaaand now for the longest author's note ever!!**

When I finish a long fic I like to add a chapter on the writing process, mostly because I love reading those kinds of notes from other writers, but also because writing is my main hobby and I like talking about what goes into it. My favorite thing about being involved in fandom is finding new worlds to produce fic in. The Be More Chill verse has been awesome for that!

**The ~Process~**

This was my fic for the Be More Chill Big Bang, which meant it came with a due date of some time in February, and a minimum word requirement of 10,000. This story is different than anything I've ever written, because it's the first fic I've ever made an outline for. Usually I just write whatever comes into my head, and hope I don't write myself into a corner. Very frequently I _do_ write myself into a corner, and then the story never gets finished. The other main differences between this fic and my other stories is that I wrote and completed the whole thing over a period of several months, revised and edited a ton, then posted the entire completed story in one day. Normally the stories I post are hot off the presses, so to speak. 

The outline for the story was written on the third of September, and the first chapter was finished later that month. For the next several weeks, my only progress was obsessively editing the first chapter. Yikes. Seriously, that first chapter was edited so many times. Chapters 2-3 were written slowly and painstakingly between late November and the end of December, then there was even more editing. Then, my winter vacation started in late January, and I knew there was no way that I'd finish the story unless I really went hard on the whole writing thing. I set a daily goal of 3,000 words, and mostly reached it! I used a lot of Write or Die, an app which plays unpleasant noises and pops up pictures of spiders if you don't write fast enough. It's pretty useful, except that what comes out as a result tends to look like this: 

_Jeremy's phone pungs._

_"whats hapoening?" Chridtine asks._

_"ts my dad" says Jeremy. "he wants to inow if im having fun with gis camea."_

_"dude," says Michael. "He asks you that every time he contacts you. one of these days youre gonna have to bite the bullet amd at leadt try the thing out."_

_"i told him i love ig snd im making lots of good pictures."_

_"honestlu!" scolds Christne._

_"says the gifl eno is pretending thsg Broghurt tastwx good."_

So, you know, Write or Die is good if you want to blast out 2000 words in an hour, but the cost is that you’ll need to spend several hours editing. 

Luckily, I managed to finish the story just before the due date, with enough time for me to go back and revise the entire thing, and now it's here. There were a few days where I thought I wasn't going to get this done in time, and I was joking with my friend about a possible “rocks fall everybody dies” or “it was all a dream” cop-out ending just to technically fulfill the rules of the Big Bang challenge. I'm glad it didn't come to that! 

 

 **About that Outline**

The impact of writing an outline was that I knew (for once in my life!) where the characters were heading. I was able to plan things to give Christine, Michael, and Jeremy almost equal POV time. I was able to think of the theme of outward spirals and include it deliberately at various points during the story, and figure out what role Jeremy’s photography would play. I knew that Jeremy and Michael would definitely be getting together at the end, and I was able to put in hints towards that as the story progressed. 

Some things in the story were not planned! There was nothing in the outline about Maadhav the rat. I'd talked a bit on tumblr about what a squipped animal would be like, and I was in a Write or Die session (during which nonsense often flies out of my fingers to avoid the spiders…), and Maadhav just kind of happened. Then died. Because I didn't know what to do with him, and needed him out before he disrupted my plans for the other characters too much. At least he revealed some things about Jeremy’s highly empathetic nature, and heightened the science fiction aspect of the story in his short life. 

Christine's emotional breakdown was also unplanned. I’d intended to give her problems with housekeeping, and I outlined the whole thing where she tried to go to an audition and encountered a lot of mishaps. I also planned to contrast the way she handled the Squip’s influence on her mind with the way Jeremy handled it. Things just escalated way more than I thought they would. It's like as I was writing Christine her character took over and got increasingly upset about everything I was putting her through. Poor Christine. According to the outline she was supposed to get that role in In My Life, but instead she got fired for a yoghurt commercial and became a waitress. Rest assured that I fully assume she’ll get her big break someday. 

The other major thing that changed from the outline to the finished fic was that Sarah’s wedding was originally going to be a Bat Mitzvah. That changed because I wanted to establish a version of adulthood that was different than Jeremy’s, while still (hopefully) establishing that Jeremy’s version of adulthood was acceptable and okay. 

**Other Writing and my BMC verse**

At this point I've written 27 Be More Chill Stories. Most of them are interconnected! Here are some notes on that. 

Semi interconnected fics - 

Laundry Days, Stammer, Five Times Jeremy did Something Terrible Under the Squip’s Influence, Stumbling Through. All of these were written before the off-Broadway version of BMC, so Michael has a mom and a dad in these ones, and some other BMC canon details are slightly off. However, a lot of how I view Jeremy, Christine, and Michael has to do with stuff I first started to conceptualize via writing these fics. Also, Ridwana, Mrs. Hameln, and the Squip Network are all things that came out of Stammer. 

\- Fully interconnected fics - 

Blocking, Abscise, Absolve, Absorb, Alternating Voices, Life in the Loser Pit, Six Times Michael Totally Went Along with Jeremy’s Weird BS, Bracelet, Amuse Me, Sickness, Jeremy Drops Out Of College During December of his Freshmen Year

My other fics are not interconnected with this fic, and should be assumed to be going on in slightly alternate universes.

One of the things that I find helpful about having a lot of stories set during different points in the characters’ childhoods/teen years was that I felt at this point that I knew them well enough to effectively make them move from the kids they are in canon, into adulthood. 

 

 **About Adulthood**

I haven't seen a lot of fics that tackle what the Be More Chill crew might be like after their college years have come and gone, so that was something that I wanted to do. One thing that I tried to capture was that there isn't one right way to grow up, and it's not something that happens all at once, even if one is 18, or 23, or 30, or 50. In this fic, Jeremy, Michael, and Christine are all thriving in some ways, and floundering in others, and that's okay. 

Jeremy, for instance, has missed a lot of the milestones and goal posts that stereotypically go with growing up. He's getting started on them, but at an older age than a lot of people do. He might not necessarily succeed at all of them even this time around, but he's going to keep trying, or else find his own, different milestones. He's a character who has been through a lot, and desperately needed time to stop and recover. Taking that time was the best and healthiest thing he could have done. In previous fics I've written, Michael usually took on a lot of the work of making sure Jeremy was taken care of. In this fic, they reach a point where they are on more equal footing, and even though Jeremy will definitely still have times in his life where he crashes and needs help, he's comfortable reaching out to a lot of different people, not only Michael. One place where Jeremy has grown is that, in spite of his own mental turmoil, he's better at supporting others when they need it. He's also got an interest hat is purely his own, in the form of his photography hobby. Although Michael and Christine both end up getting involved in the household photography craze, in this particular area Jeremy finally gets to be player 1. Also, although Jeremy doesn't always seem like the most put together, out of the three people in the house he's the only one who has figured out certain life skills like cooking and cleaning. In short, Jeremy’s experience with the Squip (plus general anxiety and Stuff) is always going impact him, but he's starting to hit his stride. 

Christine, on the other hand, is a character who has always found ways to thrive. She's driven and passionate, and she is pursuing what she loves. At the beginning of the story, she's doing a lot better career wise than either Michael or Jeremy. Let six months to two years pass from where the story ends, and she’ll be once again flourishing. She doesn't have time to think about her problems, which is how they catch up to her. Also, she's living without either her parents or college-style dorm mates for the first time, so there's nobody but herself around to keep her living space from becoming too chaotic for her to handle. Basically, while focusing single-mindedly on one kind of progression, Christine has been letting other things in her life fester, and it's having a snowball effect. This will probably keep happening to her periodically throughout her life, but she’ll learn to keep everything together for longer periods, and to get better at handling things falling apart around her. I also wanted to use Christine as an adult who still isn't sure where she falls on the whole romantic and sexual orientation spectrum. That's a hard thing to figure out, and I think there's a lot of pressure on people to find a label as young as possible. For some people, that's great! I write Michael as having known he was gay since high school, if not earlier. For Christine it doesn't work, and she's still not sure how she feels in that area. 

With Michael, I wanted to explore how his complete comfort with himself and willingness to accept the world as it is could go a little too far, and lead him into a period of directionless floating. I also wanted to explore how his love of his friends, and dedication to them, could lead him to stretching himself too thin in an attempt to keep everyone together and make sure they all had what they needed. Michael needed to reach the point where he could stop pushing himself beyond his limits, take a step back, and trust Jeremy and Christine to pick up the slack. Jeremy and Christine are also struggling at the point where Michael does, but he needs to let go and realize that their struggles aren't more important than his. 

The fourth adult in this fic was, of course, Mr. Heere. Obviously, he wasn't the most important character in this story, but I did want to drive home that he's doing a lot better at being there for  
Jeremy than he was in canon. Mr. Heere isn't doing anything as exciting as saving the world via an online Squip Network or hurtling towards Broadway stardom, and in some ways his life is quite small, but he's got a handle on it. The idea that Mr. Heere went through a period where he was too depressed to put on pants, but survived and learned something from the experience and is still soldering on, doing his best, and extremely valuable to people is important. He's somebody who has managed to bounce back from an emotional breakdown of sorts and that's a big deal. 

**In Conclusion**

Life goes on for the characters in a Voices in My Head kinda fashion. More power to them. 

Thanks for reading! <3


End file.
